‘I think Susannah may have met her match,’ said Mrs Gillies, at length.
Remembering the ruthlessly charming way he had outmanoeuvred his two rivals in the park, Deborah was forced to agree with her.
* * *
‘What the devil is Lampton playing at, that is what I want to know.’ Captain Fawley scowled at his brother, across the dining table, some ten days later. ‘The way he is monopolising Miss Hullworthy is becoming the talk of the clubs. And don’t tell me he is thinking of marrying her, for I won’t believe it. Apart from the fact he enjoys his bachelor status far too much to hazard it for any woman, no Lampton would stoop to marrying a cit’s daughter.’
The Earl of Walton frowned thoughtfully into his glass of port. ‘He lacks only four months to his thirtieth birthday,’ he said at length, enigmatically.
‘What has that to say to anything?’
The Earl sighed, then looked his younger brother full in the face. ‘What is Miss Hullworthy to you, Robert? Do you care for her?’
‘I certainly don’t want to see her ruined. Good God, you know what a menace Lampton is around women. Only remember the trouble he caused Heloise when she first came to London!’
Percy Lampton had joined forces with the Earl’s discarded mistress in an attempt to soil his young bride’s reputation. The marriage had very nearly foundered before the Earl had got wise to what was going on.
‘I don’t forget it,’ said the Earl crisply. ‘Although, in this particular case, I think I can see what motivates him.’
‘Well, I cannot! Much as I dislike the man,’ he said with a pensive frown, ‘he strikes me as too fastidious to get embroiled in the kind of scandal that would erupt if he really did seduce her….’
‘He won’t need to go so far. All he means to do, I think, is to keep her away from you until he attains the age of thirty.’
‘What has his age to do with anything?’
The Earl sighed. ‘Upon his thirtieth birthday, Percy Lampton will come into a substantial inheritance.’
‘But what has that to do with me? Or Miss Hullworthy, come to that?’
‘You brought her to his notice, Robert, by pursuing her so hotly. Inviting her to Lensborough’s engagement ball caused the devil of a stir.’
‘That was my intent,’ Captain Fawley replied brusquely. ‘But why should Lampton think my affairs are any of his business?’
‘Because of my Aunt Euphemia’s will, I should think,’ he said wryly. ‘Which rather ambiguously named either you, or Percy Lampton as her heir.’
Captain Fawley went very still. ‘I have been named in the will of some woman that I have never heard of? Why has nobody informed me of the fact until today?’
The Earl shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Aunt Euphemia died not long after I brought you home from Spain. My mother’s family always regarded her as something of an eccentric, but when her will was finally read out, they declared she must have been unhinged. I do not think so. And nor did her lawyers or her doctors. Naming you as her beneficiary was not an irrational act, but rather her attempt to redress the injustice she felt her brothers had done to you over the matter of your upbringing.’
‘Felt they had done?’
The Earl acknowledged his brother’s objection. ‘Did do. We both know your mother should have been moved to the dower house and granted an annuity, and that you should have been brought up at Wycke, along with me.’ He clenched his fist on the tabletop. ‘They would have contested Aunt Euphemia’s will, too, if I had not convinced them I had the resources to fight them tooth and nail until there would have been nothing left for anyone to inherit. Eventually, we reached a compromise with the trustees of her estate, which ensured that at least her fortune would remain intact until such time as one of you met with certain conditions.’ He swirled his port round in his glass, staring into it meditatively. ‘I rather think they ceded to my terms, instead of embarking on what would have been a protracted legal case because, at that time, nobody really expected you to survive.’ He smiled mirthlessly.
‘All right,’ Captain Fawley grated, ‘I accept that at the time this will was read, you acted on my behalf, since everyone thought I was about to stick my spoon in the wall. But I have been living under your roof for nigh on two years. Why is this the first I have heard about the will?’
‘Would you believe me if I told you I did not think it would do you any good?’
‘Not do me any good? I have a substantial sum of money owed me—at least I must assume it is, or the Lamptons would not have considered contesting the will to get it—and you say it would not do me any good?’ Captain Fawley got to his feet, blood surging hotly through his veins. This was not the first time he had felt such hatred for his brother. No, he checked himself, only his half-brother. Though they shared the same father, his mother had never quite made the grade with the Earl’s starchy relations. They had evicted her from his father’s home before he was cold in his grave, threatening her with all sorts of dire consequences should she try to claim anything from her late husband’s estate. Bereft, pregnant and without powerful friends to advise her, she had quietly returned to her middle-class family and dwindled away.
‘What are you about, Walton? You pretend to act in my interests, but how can I forget that your mother was a Lampton too?’
Walton barely reacted to his brother’s thinly veiled accusation.
‘You forget, perhaps, that I mentioned there were conditions attached to you inheriting anything,’ he said with icy calm. ‘Until a few weeks ago, nobody, least of all myself, could have guessed you might want to meet them.’
‘If I had known what they are, I would have been able to make the decision for myself!’
‘Then do so now,’ the Earl stated coldly. ‘If you truly wish to escape the ignominy of living on my charity, all you have to do is make a respectable marriage. For one thing my aunt made resoundingly clear. She had no wish to have a bachelor living in her house. But do not tarry, Robert. If you are not married by the time Percy attains the age of thirty, then the trustees have decreed everything will go to him. He is, after all, a blood relative, which you are not.’
Robert felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. No woman in her right mind would marry him. He knew it. Charles knew it. That was why he had not told him about the legacy. Knowing that a fortune lurked for ever just beyond his reach would only have added a further layer of torture to his existence.
He slumped back into his chair. Once again, he had lashed out at his brother, who had only ever had his welfare at heart. And sadly, though they both knew he hated having to subsist on his brother’s charity, they also knew there was no viable alternative. Charles had offered on numerous occasions to make over to him the estates and trusts that should have been his, as the younger son of the Earl of Walton. Had he inherited them from his father, he would have been glad to live the life of a gentleman farmer, pottering about his acres. But the old man had not named him in his will…how could he, when he had not even been aware his wife was pregnant when he had died so suddenly? To accept them now, from his brother, out of some kind of misguided charity… He grimaced with distaste. No, he had been brought low enough, without stooping to accepting handouts, like some beggar on the streets.
If only he could be independent! His mind revolved over what Walton had just told him about this will. All he had to do, apparently, was to persuade a respectable female to marry him. Yes, that was all, he reflected bitterly. Persuade some poor woman to wake up to the nightmare of his face upon her pillow every morning.
Yet, Lampton must have thought he might have been able to persuade Miss Hullworthy to marry him. Or why would he have gone to such lengths to detach her from him?
‘Damn