Fair Fortune: A Tangled Hearts Romance Read online

  FAIR FORTUNE

  A TANGLED

  HEARTS Romance

  Rebecca Ward

  Copyright 1989 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

  The Honorable George Montesque’s round and usually genial face wore an anxious pucker as he addressed the brass knocker on the vast wooden door of an apartment on London’s fashionable Stratton Street.

  “Trent in, Weldon?” he inquired of the sedate individual who answered the knock.

  The manservant bowed. “Good morning, Mr. Montesque. Mr. Trenton is at the moment conferring with his solicitor in the study. If you will be so kind as to step inside and wait?”

  “Suppose I must.” Montesque divested himself of gloves, hat, and walking stick, then, settling his coat of buff superfine around his comfortable middle, strolled into the small front parlor.

  It was a pleasant chamber, warmed by a blazing fire as well as the pale April sun. Montesque moved past a mahogany sideboard cluttered with bottles and tankards, a box of cigars, a blue ceramic tobacco jar, several pipes, invitations and advertisements to cockfights and sparring contests, a black lace garter, and a lady’s fan, and made for a grouping of leather armchairs arranged around the hearth.

  In one of these armchairs sat a fair-haired, long-faced gentleman. He was dressed for riding in a gray coat, buckskin breeches, and top boots, but his eyes were half closed as though he might fall asleep at any moment.

  “Morning, Monty,” he murmured. “Early for you, I think? Dashed late when Trent and I left you at White’s last night, and you said you were going on to Boodles’. I thought you’d still be in bed.”

  Montesque laughed somewhat uneasily. “Weldon didn’t tell me you were here, Button. What are you doing at Trent’s at ten in the morning? Ain’t civilized, calling on one’s friends at ten. Ought to wait till eleven at the least.”

  Mr. Jermyn Butterworth yawned and contrived to look even more languid. “I’m here to witness Trent’s putting his new grays through their paces. They are dashed fine goers.” Suddenly he fixed his pale gray eyes on his rotund companion and added somewhat sternly, “It’s no use bamming me, Monty, I know why you’re here. I mean to say, you were badly dipped last night, and now you’ve come to put the touch on Trent.”

  Montesque did not deny this. “Got to tell you, Button, there ain’t such a thing as justice. Went to Boodles’ after I left you two. No luck there, nor at Pickering Place, neither. Something in what they say about the wheel.”

  Button studied his manicured hands while asking, “What wheel?” Montesque cast himself into an armchair, stretched his short legs toward the fire, and stared moodily at his Hessians. “The thingummy that Fortune is supposed to be spinning around all the time,” he replied. “One moment, you’re up—next moment, you’re down. Round and round you go.”

  “But that sounds dashed uncomfortable,” Button protested. “I wouldn’t care for it by half, Monty, going round and round like that. I mean to say, you’d be bound to get dizzy and fall off sometime, and then where would you be? In the basket, that’s where.”

  “Quite so,” Montesque agreed gloomily.

  A brief silence descended on the front parlor during which time Weldon glided in with a decanter of sherry. “I say, Weldon,” Montesque exclaimed, “how long has Trent been in there with the dashed lawyer?”

  Weldon’s cough was discreet. “It has been some time, sir, since Mr. Palchard arrived. There has been some discussion concerning the terms of the late Earl of Longmarsh’s will.”

  “That would be Trent’s great-uncle,” Button informed the bewildered Montesque. “You didn’t know that, perhaps? He never met Trent but the once, when he was a little perisher—Trent, I mean, not Longmarsh—and it just goes to show you, Monty. Longmarsh had any amount of heirs, but they all pegged out, one by one. So Trent’s the new Earl of Longmarsh.”

  “How do you know that?” Montesque challenged, and his friend begged him not to be sheep-brained.

  “If Trent isn’t in for the title, why would a legal fellow come and see him?” Button demanded.

  “Something in that,” Montesque allowed.

  They were helping themselves to the sherry when voices were suddenly raised in the study. The door banged open and a small, spare, elderly gentleman shot out. There were angry spots of color on his cheeks, and his eyeglasses were balanced crookedly on the high bridge of his nose.

  “Mr. Trenton, I advise caution and restraint,” he cried.

  An incensed voice from the study told him just what he could do with caution and restraint. Montesque tutted. “Trent sounds hipped, don’t he? Think he’s been shooting the cat?”

  As he spoke, Mr. Kenneth Trenton strode out of his study. Though he did not look drunk, he was definitely agitated. His tall, athletic frame, swathed in a purple brocade dressing gown, was held as tensely as a whiplash. His dark hair, usually elegantly arranged à la Titus, looked to be standing on end. His green eyes blazed like a mountain cat’s.

  “Oh, I say,” Montesque breathed.

  “Mr. Trenton, as your legal adviser, I insist that you compose yourself.” The elderly gentleman settled his spectacles firmly on his nose and drew himself up to his full five foot three. “The terms of your great-uncle’s will are explicit. There are no loopholes. There is no redress. You have the choice of submitting to the terms of the will or of not doing so.”

  “I know that, Palchard,” Trent gritted. “You’ve told me.”

  “If I may advise you as I advised your father before you, nothing will be gained by railing against fate. Nothing, sir!” Mr. Palchard donned the hat Weldon had been holding, threw his greatcoat about his shoulders, and perambulated toward the door. “I bid you good day, Mr. Trenton.”

  “Peevish old fidget,” Button observed.

  Trent turned his head and saw his friends. “So it’s you,” he growled. “What’re you here for, Monty? If you mean to ask me for money, it’s no use. I don’t have any.”

  “Hang it, Trent, you are too kind-hearted for your own good,” Montesque said with some heat. “I’ll wager you lent Handerby the blunt he needed to stay out of Queer Street, didn’t you? Shouldn’t be so liberal with your capital. Not the thing at all.”

  Trent flung himself into an armchair. “Weldon, I need something to drink. Something with teeth in it.”

  As the manservant departed, Montesque continued, “Anyway, what do you mean you’re short of blunt? Thought you came into an earldom. Or was that a hum?”

  Trent bared white teeth in a savage grin. “I inherited, all right.”

  “I told you so,” Button said to Montesque. Then a look of dismay crossed his long face. “Wait a minute. All that blather about terms . . . Trent, you don’t have to—to go and marry some frightful female before you succeed to the earldom?”

  “Worse!”

  “What could be worse?”

  Trent covered his face with his hands.

  Montesque looked pained. “Should speak clearly, dear old boy. Diction’s the thing. Thought you said ‘work.’ ”

  Trent withdrew his hands and said clearly, “Palchard tells me that by the terms of Longmarsh’s will, I shall be penniless unless I go to work.”

  Button choked on the sherry he was drinking. Montesque’s round blue eyes seemed in danger of popping out of his head. He asked feebly, “What kind of work, Trent? Know you’re bookish. Don’t mean it as an insult, give you my word, only you did go up to Oxford for a year or two. Does your great-uncle want you to become a solicitor?”

  Trent sprang to his feet and began to pace around the room so rapidly that his dressing gown flapped about his long, muscular legs.

  “Longmarsh, blast his filthy old hide, said that before I could inherit any of his money that isn’t entailed I’d have to earn it. It comes to ten thousand a year. Without it, there’s no way that I can keep the estate going.” He took another turn about the room and added bitterly, “The first thing I have to do is go and live at Longmarsh.”

  “You have to l-live away from London?” stammered Button.

  “For twelve months. During that time I have to work on the estate. And ‘because of my love and skill with horses,’ I’m to start as a groom.”

  His friends stared at him in speechless horror. Montesque moaned, “The old fellow must have been touched in the upper works!”

  Trent came to a stop in front of the hearth. He seized a poker and stabbed at a log as though it were his great-uncle. “Not he,” he said bitterly. “It was Rousseau.”

  “Don’t know the blighter,” Montesque said promptly. “Button don’t know him, either. Funny sort of name. Who the deuce is Ruesow?”

  “A Frenchman,” Trent said briefly.

  “There you are, then, Trent. Old fellow must have been as queer as Dick’s hatband if he hung about with foreigners. Er, what did this Frenchy want with Longmarsh?”

  “He wrote books. My great-uncle read them and got a bee in his bonnet that all men are equal. He believed in the noble savage. Mind you,” Trent continued, “I’m feeling pretty savage myself. I came close
to telling Palchard to tear up the filthy will.”

  Button, who had been speechless for some time, warned feebly, “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Trent.”

  His friend turned burning green eyes on him. “By the terms of the will, I’d have to be at Longmarsh next week.”

  “Next week!” exclaimed Button. Quite forgetting his languor, he added, “But I thought you’d arranged to go to Epping for that shooting match. And, Trent, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Downsom. I mean to say, the fellow has been insupportable since he bought his matched pair. He needs a setdown and you’re the one to give it to him. I’d even go so far as to suggest that you should engage him in a driving contest. Your team will make his look like puffers!”

  “Hang Downsom and hang Epping, too,” Trent exploded. “Don’t you realize that Miss Jerryham will be in London next week?”

  He did not have to elaborate. Both Button and Montesque knew that Trent’s courtship of Sir Bartholomew Jerryham’s youngest daughter had been a difficult one, for Lavinia Jerryham was the acclaimed beauty of the past season. She had hair that had been compared to the purest gold, eyes of a celestial blue, a complexion so pale as to put lilies in the shade, an exquisitely slender waist, and a fat fortune. Many were the eligibles who languished at her feet, and it was the talk of the ton that when she had refused the Duke of Comfrey, he had sworn to shoot, hang, and strangle himself.

  It did not surprise anyone that young Mr. Trenton’s suit should be scorned by Sir Bartholomew and Lady Jerryham. As the son of the late Honorable James Trenton, a Devonshire gentleman, he was well connected but without title, land, and fortune. An independence left to Trent by his late father allowed him a fair annual income, but it was hardly enough to cover the costs of Trent’s London lodgings, a stable of fine animals to grace his curricle, and the cash needed to rescue his friends from their debts. Certainly, he had little to offer a diamond of the first water like Lavinia Jerryham.

  Yet Trent was well thought of. Though certainly no fashionable tulip, his masterly way of tying a cravat had caused much envy among the blades of the ton, who also considered him a nonpareil and a dashed good friend in a pinch. His handsome figure with its six feet of lean, broad-shouldered good looks, romantically arranged dark hair, and flashing green eyes had caused many ladies’ hearts—and the eyelashes of the most exquisite among the demimonde—to flutter. And it was whispered that the incomparable Lavinia had looked more favorably on Trent than her mama had liked.

  “She loves me,” Trent informed his friends. “Or if she doesn’t love me now, she will in time. But, hang it, by the terms of this will, I have no time. Just when the Season’s starting, I’d have to leave London. Longmarsh is a least eighty miles away. Father took me there once—and once was more than enough. Curst flat place, I can tell you.”

  He began to describe the estate. “Nothing’s doing there. Absolutely nothing. Acres of sheep and farmland, a trout brook or two, a ramshackle village—that’s the extent of it. My nearest neighbor is a Lady Vere, Palchard says. She’s a widow in her fifties—some vague, provincial tabby, I imagine. Her property abuts part of Longmarsh’s estate.”

  Button had been looking thoughtful. Now he said, “Never mind all of that. You have got to think positively, Trent. With Longmarsh’s lands, the title, and that ten thousand a year, Miss Jerryham’s bound to look on you favorably.”

  Trent’s eyes flashed dangerously as he informed Mr. Butterworth that Miss Lavinia Jerryham did not have a mercenary bone in her body.

  “Gammon,” Button retorted. “She’s got a mother, hasn’t she? Mothers are always interested in money. I mean to say, Trent, that if you become rich and propertied, Lady Jerryham will eat out of your hand. But you’ve got to inherit that money first.”

  Trent groaned. “Curse it if you aren’t right. Lady Jerryham’s a fire-eater, and no mistake. For Lavinia’s sake then. But to be a dashed groom!” he added furiously. “I’ll be expected to muck out the stables.”

  Montesque shuddered convulsively. “Horrible, dear old boy. Beg you won’t mention it. Hope you don’t run into anybody we know.”

  “Hardly likely, is it? Besides, that miserable will forbids me to ‘divulge my true identity’ unless there’s a dire emergency. As if I’d want anyone to know! I suppose,” Trent concluded mournfully, “I should be thankful that nobody will realize who I am except the land steward, Howard Block.”

  Weldon appeared at that moment. He held a silver tray on which stood a crystal goblet. Trent grabbed it, swallowed, and made a face. “Lord, that’s awful. What is it?”

  “Lemonade, sir.”

  “Lemonade! Of all the cabbage-brained— I asked for something strong, didn’t I?”

  Weldon met his master’s glare impassively. “It is unlikely that you will be served brandy or sherry at Longmarsh, sir. And the domestic help is never permitted to imbibe spirits while on duty. One must begin somewhere, sir, if I might make so bold.”

  Trent looked stricken. Montesque went up to him and put a pudgy arm around his friend’s broad shoulders.

  “It’s the damned wheel, Trent.” He sighed. “No help for it, dear old boy. Wheel goes round and round, and right now you’re at the bottom of its swing. Mark my words, it’s your turn to be in the basket.”

  Chapter Two

  Young Peter Link, underfootman in the employ of Charlotte Choate, Lady Vere, held open the side door to Vere Hall and gave his deepest bow. This was odd in view of the fact that the young woman walking briskly along the ground-floor anteroom was obviously not one of the privileged ten thousand.

  Though she moved with a grace that a queen might admire, her neat gray dress of unadorned muslin was not in its first youth and her bonnet was frankly ugly. Nor was the face framed by that dispirited bonnet one of matchless beauty. Though the young lady’s large hazel eyes were uncommonly handsome and expressive, her nose was too pert to be modish, her hair an unstylish red-gold color, and the generous curve of her mouth did not even remotely resemble a cupid’s bow. Even so, her smile made young Link feel as if the sun had suddenly burst through the clouds.

  “I’m so grateful it has decided not to rain,” she was saying.

  Link glanced swiftly about. Seeing that the butler, Reddington, was nowhere is sight, he warned, “Well, Miss Margaret, you’d best be careful. It might still rain an’ all. April weather’s that changeable.”

  Margaret Hannay stepped through the door and tilted her face toward the gray sky. “But I can see the sun behind the clouds.” She smiled again and added, “Thank you, Link, and good night.”

  The underfootman bowed once more and watched her walk down the stairs with her customary brisk step. It was as if Miss Margaret couldn’t wait to leave Vere Hall, and no wonder. The poor young lady had been penned indoors all day with the mistress, who was as mean a squeeze-crab as ever lived. Run here, go there, take it back, I don’t want it—that was my lady’s style. And she treated her paid young companion like a slave.

  This fact had drawn battle lines belowstairs. Reddington, the butler who had tyrannized Vere domestics for thirty years, was swift to follow his mistress’s lead, and Lady Vere’s Tyburn-faced dresser, Palley, did what she could to make Miss Margaret’s life even more miserable. The other servants ranged themselves squarely on the young lady’s side and admired the fact that no matter how badly Lady Vere abused her, she never lost her smile.

  Margaret was smiling now—with anticipation. “Tea,” she told herself hungrily, “with thick toast and a good cose with Mama. And I shan’t have to see Lady Vere for fourteen more hours. What could be better?”

  Humming to herself, she passed her employer’s topiary garden and followed the path toward the bridge that spanned a trout stream. Beyond the bridge was a thicket of beech and alder trees that marked the end of Lady Vere’s property and the beginning of the broad acreage that belonged to the Earl of Longmarsh.

  “Bloody hell!”

  The furious male voice exploded out of nowhere and stopped Margaret dead in her tracks. She looked quickly about her but saw nothing.

  “Oh, damn and confound this filthy thing to perdition,” the voice roared. “I won’t go on with it. Hell and the devil, I’m done!”

  A wooden pole came hurtling out of the trees. It was followed immediately by the business end of a pitchfork. Next, a tall, broad-shouldered man erupted into view.