Chapter Two
“Who the devil is that?” Lord Mountjoy said, as the sound of the door knocker resonated through the house. Disturbed in the nice arrangement of his cravat, he paused, then twitched it into place and stood up.
Nempnet, his valet, said, “Unusually early for a caller, my lord, and too uncouth and loud a noise to be a servant with a message.”
Downstairs, the butler went to the front door, a look of disapproval on his usually impassive face. Two curious footmen hovered behind him.
He stared in disbelief at the young woman who stood on the doorstep, far from fashionably dressed. Her hair was long and rather tangled beneath a hat that made him shudder. Her hand was raised, doubtless ready to repeat her performance with the knocker. Rigby made to close the door, but he was too late; the stranger had placed her foot in the way.
“I’ve come to see Lord Mountjoy. In fact,” she said, gesturing to a bandbox set down at her feet, “I’ve come to stay.”
Rigby’s eyes nearly started from his head, but he was too well trained to show more than a passing look of alarm, then distaste.
“His lordship is not at home.”
“In which case, I’ll come in and wait until he is.”
Lord Mountjoy said to his valet, “What the devil is going on down there?”
“Shall I go and see, my lord?”
“Yes. Although if it’s an unwelcome visitor, I can’t for the life of me think why Rigby hasn’t got rid of him.”
Two minutes later, Nempnet was back. “It is a young person, my lord. She claims she knows you and says she has come to stay.”
Lord Mountjoy and his valet looked at one another. Nempnet had been with Mountjoy since he was a young man, and twenty years in his service meant that he knew the many dark and rakish secrets of his lordship’s past.
But those times were surely a thing of the past. Lord Mountjoy was now a married man; a reformed man, in Nempnet’s opinion, although there were many of his lordship’s acquaintance who didn’t believe it for a moment, holding that once a rake, always a rake.
“Does this young person have a name?”
“She says she is a Miss Welburn, my lord.”
Lord Mountjoy clapped his hand to his forehead. “Did you say Welburn? Valentine Welburn? Good God, what is she doing here?”
“She is a young person of some persistence, Rigby says, but I daresay he will be able to eject her from the premises.”
“She isn’t a young person, Nempnet. She’s a young lady, whatever appearances show. She’s my goddaughter, but I can’t think what she is doing in England, in London, and on my doorstep. She lives in India.”
Shrugging himself into a well-fitting blue tailcoat, Lord Mountjoy descended to the hall.
Valentine looked up as he came down, and she dropped a curtsy, holding out her hand and saying with perfect politeness, “Lord Mountjoy? I’m sorry to arrive so early in the morning, but I think you are expecting me.”
“Good heavens, is it really you, Valentine?” Lord Mountjoy said, looking her up and down. The last and only time he’d set eyes on his goddaughter, she was a month old and protesting furiously as a wary parson splashed water over her head.
She gave him a wide smile. “Yes, I am Valentine. We have never been properly introduced except at the font, which of course I don’t remember. I hope I find you well.”
“Perfectly well, thank you, but somewhat surprised at your arrival, which is unexpected.”
Valentine removed her hat, and her hair tumbled over her shoulders. She shook herself, unconcerned by the eccentricity of her appearance. “I suspect you never received my letter. I sent it when I embarked at Bombay so you might know which vessel I was travelling on. But Papa said he had already written to you. Those wretched mails; probably both letters are at the bottom of the ocean.”
“I’ll have to ask my secretary, but I am sure that if any letter had come from India, I would have been informed of it. Have you only just arrived in this country? And on your own? No, don’t say anything more for a moment.” He instructed Rigby to tell the housekeeper to make ready a room for Miss Welburn and to bring some refreshments. Then he ushered her into the library, where a cheerful fire was blazing in the grate. “We shall be more comfortable in here; pray take a seat.”
Valentine sat down and held out her hands toward the fire. “I daresay I shall get used to a cold climate in time. I had not imagined that spring would be so chilly.”
A footman came in bearing a tray, which he set down beside Valentine. She looked appreciatively at the plate of bread and butter and fruit, and waited while he poured a cup of coffee.
Lord Mountjoy said, “I know that your father was planning for you to come to London and do the season next year. I trust you left him well, that your journey was not because of some misfortune that has struck him?”
“Well, I have to report that poor Papa was eaten by a tiger, and so I am cast alone upon the world, a tragic orphan,” Valentine said.
Lord Mountjoy raised his eyebrows in a polite expression of disbelief. “People do succumb to attacks from wild beasts in places such as India, but I think that your father is a man of too much sense to end his days in the jaws of a tiger.”
“You are perfectly right, of course. My father is well, but there are circumstances—how shall I put this delicately?—matters concerning his domestic arrangements that made him inclined to send me to England sooner rather than later. I am twenty, you know, and so already almost too old to do my first season.”
“Nonsense. However, we have more immediate matters to discuss. I trust you didn’t travel from India with only a bandbox?”
“No, no, I have any number of trunks and boxes, which are being sent on from the docks.”
“Likewise, a maid?”
“Oh, I have no maid,” Valentine said cheerfully. “I had a maid in India, of course—we have a horde of servants there—but I did not feel it fair to bring any of them to England. I hear such tales of the cold and damp, which would not suit those bred to a hotter clime. Besides, I was told that people of a darker complexion are not always well received by their fellow servants, and so I thought it best to wait until I came to London to engage an abigail.”
“I do hope you did not make the sea voyage entirely unaccompanied.” Lord Mountjoy was not one to care much for the conventions, but he was well aware that to have travelled halfway across the world alone would be enough to blight the prospects of any young woman embarking upon her London season.
“You may set your mind at rest. I travelled in the company of Colonel Heron and his wife. They were very against my coming on to Mountjoy House by myself, but I did not share their concern. They live in Dorset, you understand, and were anxious to get home, so I didn’t want to put the colonel to the trouble of bringing me here before resuming his journey.”
Lord Mountjoy frowned. “I can’t believe that Colonel Heron would leave you on your own.”
“He didn’t realize I was on my own, for I pretended I saw a manservant of yours come to meet me. He was distracted just then, as was Mrs. Heron, so I made my escape.”
“You did not walk, I assume.”
“No, of course not. I came in a hackney cab.”
Lord Mountjoy winced. “Unaccompanied? I don’t wish to resume our acquaintance by lecturing you on the folly of such behaviour, but believe me, it will not do. Your father would say the same were he here.”
“You are right, he would be exceedingly angry with me. But he isn’t, which is fortunate. ‘What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over’ is a favourite motto of mine.”
Lord Mountjoy frowned. This was no demure, biddable young woman his old friend had dispatched to England. However, he would leave it to Lady Mountjoy to put her wise on the ways of the world.
“Don’t look so disapproving, because as it happens, I was not without an escort,” Valentine said. “An interfering gentleman who claims to be a friend of yours—he is certainly acquainted with Colonel Heron—insisted on accompanying me. Not in the hackney; he was on horseback, having ridden to the port to bid farewell to some friend of his who sails today.”
Lord Mountjoy didn’t look grateful at this news. “Indeed? Does this enterprising gentleman have a name?”
“Marbeck. He didn’t tell me his Christian name. A tall man, very bossy.”
“Marbeck is his title, he is Lord Marbeck. You were in good hands, and I am obliged to him.”
“I thought you might be, but he wouldn’t stay to be thanked. He says he will do the honour of calling on me, but he may save himself the trouble, as I think him a most disagreeable man.”
Lord Mountjoy was about to reply when his housekeeper, Mrs. Rushworth, came into the room to say that Miss Welburn’s chamber was ready if she would like to come upstairs.
Valentine rose, flashed Mountjoy another of her smiles, dropped a quick curtsy, and departed before she could hear any more about Lord Marbeck.