His duty! He must marry and impregnate his wife on his wedding night, it seemed. His grandmother did not put matters with quite such open vulgarity, of course, but that was what she meant, He had been evasive for months, but just three weeks before he had lost his good humor and pointed out to her in no uncertain terms that there was not a single lady of his acquaintance with whom he could possibly contemplate a life sentence. He would just have to gamble on living a few years longer yet and postponing that comfortable arrival of his heir.
His grandmother had called him a humbug. At least, she had called her needlepoint a humbug, which amounted to the same thing, as the stitchery could have done nothing to offend her.
"Very well, Grandmama," he had said rashly, "you name me an eligible lady and I shall go immediately and look her over. Offer for her too if I don't turn green at the prospect."
"Ella's granddaughter," she had said without a moment's hesitation, speaking of one of her card-playing cronies. "In the country. Coming up for the Season next spring, but bound to be snaffled up in a twinkling, Charles. Father loaded with the blunt. You go down there and forestall the opposition. Good family. Barrie. And just out of the schoolroom. Don't tell me that fact don't set your mouth to watering, m'boy, for I shan't believe you."
"You have not even seen the girl, Grandmama?" he had asked, aghast.
"Don't need to," she had said. "She has everything you could want in a wife, Charles. Haven't heard anything about her being unable to breed. That's all that matters, y'know. You don't need to give up all your high flyers, boy. Always used to tell Middleburgh he might have one for every day of the week as long as he kept up appearances. Didn't want him forever hanging about my skirts, anyway. A devilish nuisance, men. No offense, m'boy. What?" she said, looking up at him from beneath her eyebrows, her head still bent over her needlepoint. "Afraid?"
"When do you wish me to leave?" he had asked, knowing even as he did so that there was no way of reneging on his rash challenge now.
And so he had spent an unspeakable week with the Barries, wishing every moment to be on his way back to London again, but staying for courtesy's sake. But a week was the limit, he had decided the night before after that fiasco with the governess. He would return to Grandmama and insist that he had kept his part of the bargain. He had looked the girl over, found that he did indeed turn green at the prospect of offering for her, and so had come home without doing so.
What a waste of a week, he thought with a yawn, nodding in the direction of the innkeeper and indicating that he wished to have his tankard refilled. The only event that might have made it at all worthwhile would have been a night spent with the gray governess. She had turned out to be even lovelier than he had suspected all week. That hair! He almost regretted that he had not stolen a kiss and drawn her body against his own. He suspected that it was very feminine and very shapely indeed. A night with her would have been rare sport.
However, he had got very little for all his imaginings. Unfortunately, he was afflicted with a conscience that made it impossible for him to take even as much as a kiss from an unwilling wench. Under the circumstances perhaps it was as well that nature had framed him in such a way that he did not often encounter unwillingness. On the contrary. On occasion he had even found himself obliging eager females when he would just as soon not have done so, merely because he did not wish to hurt their feelings. But if a female did say no, he had a lamentable tendency to take her at her word. He had to want her very badly even to try a little further persuasion.
Perhaps it was not an unfortunate trait of character, he decided on second thought. He hated the idea of rape. At an all-male gathering several years before, when he had been very young and considerably more foolish, he had broken a fellow's nose and a quantity of crystal glasses and decanters after the man had recounted with pride for the noisy delight of most of his listeners how he and two other daring blades had held down and ravished a lady's maid as she sat waiting for her mistress in a carriage outside a house where a masquerade ball was in progress. The crowning glory of the tale was the fact that the girl had been virgin and was dismissed three months later for being with child.
Lord Rutherford's hand paused halfway to his mouth. Sure enough, the sounds coming from outside in the cobbled yard could be produced by nothing other than a stagecoach. Very soon now his peace would be shattered by the spilling out of the human contents of that coach. He would finish his ale and retire to the relative quiet of his parlor. It really was going to be a long evening. He would have to avail himself of the services of the maid. Though she was likely to be busy about her chores until late into the night.
He watched the passengers make their noisy entry. Two young sprigs of fashion who had been riding on the roof looked more like drowned rats than the dandies they wished to be taken for. They were both slapping their hats against their legs and shaking their greatcoats, talking and laughing loudly to try to compensate for their less than immaculate appearance. Two females, one thin and one fat. Two males to match. Another man all in black, who looked as if he might be a Methodist preacher. And Miss Moore.
Rutherford's eyebrows rose and he set his tankard down slowly on the table beside him. She did not look around her. She stood quietly a little behind all the other passengers, who were loudly jostling for place and clamoring for rooms. She was clutching a worn valise, her beauty and her form completely swallowed up in gray again. She was turned fully away from him so that there was no chance of her seeing him even out of the corner of her eye. She waited for her turn with the landlord.
He could not hear what she said, even though by the time her turn came most of the other passengers had gone off to their own rooms. But he did hear the landlord's reply quite clearly. There were no rooms left. He was sorry. He sounded far from sorry, Rutherford thought, a different man entirely from the genial and subserviant host who had welcomed a fashionable earl an hour before. She must sleep in the taproom or share Effie's bed. The choice was hers. It was all the same to him. The cost was the same, whichever she chose. Effie was the maid, Rutherford guessed.
She argued. He felt some satisfaction in watching her head come up and in knowing that she was not reacting with that meek, downward glance that she had affected with the Barries. But the show of spirit did her no good. He did not hear what she said. He was sorry, the innkeeper said with an exaggerated and careless shrug. What did she expect him to do? Call out the carpenters and make another room just for her ladyship? She disappeared upstairs after a few minutes trailed by the maid, who first turned and gave him a saucy look. Yes, she was Effie, obviously.
Strange! The woman he would have bedded last night was to share a bed with the female he had intended to make sport with tonight. Why should he feel indignation on behalf of Miss Moore, when he had judged both females desirable enough to lay their heads on the pillow next his own?
The Earl of Rutherford rose to his feet, stretched, and made his way unhurriedly to the staircase.
Jessica was sitting miserably in the taproom, trying to convince herself that she did not look as conspicuous as she felt. There was no separate dining room in the Blue Peacock. There were a few private parlors, she gathered, but of course those were very private. She was forced to take up a position in the common taproom, and there she must stay until it was bedtime. Even then she could expect no privacy or comfort. She must share the untidy and none too clean attic room of the maid, who made no bones about her reluctance to extend such hospitality.