Indiscreet

“Vote? Good Gad, you wish to vote?”

“I don’t see why not. But that is beside the matter. The point is, whether I wish to or not, I cannot. I have had an excellent education, and my understanding, I think I may say without contradiction, is not small. Yet the stupidest fellow is allowed to vote, simply because he is a man and owns property, whereas I am not.”

“God help us,” Benedict commented dryly. “A bluestocking.”

Camilla shot him a look that would have blighted a less sturdy sort. “I fail to see what is so reprehensible about a female of intellect and education. No doubt you are the sort who thinks that women should tend to their knitting and not speak unless spoken to or have a thought in their heads that does not pertain to dresses and hairstyles.”

“No, Miss Ferrand, actually, I have had quite enough of empty-headed females.” He gave her a small bow, a faint smile on his lips conveying the distinct impression that he included her among that number.

Sedgewick turned the conversation back to its original track. “So that is why you have not married, Miss Ferrand?”

“Yes. I see no reason to give any man control over myself or my property. I am a person in my own right, and I shall remain so as long as I do not marry. Therefore, I am twenty-five years old and a spinster, and while I am quite happy in that condition, it has worried my grandfather for years. After he was taken ill, it plagued him even more. He would tell me how he could not bear the thought of dying and leaving me unprotected. And no matter how I tried to tell him that I was fine, that I had the property my mother and father left me, so I am quite able to live independently, he would not stop fretting about it. He told me it was an unnatural sort of life I was leading, living on my own, even though I have a companion, so it is perfectly respectable. But he wanted me to have children and a man to take care of, and all the things that he said were right and natural for a woman.” She paused, then sighed and confessed, “So I told him that I was engaged.”

Benedict let out a short bark of laughter. “Oh, that’s rich—the defender of women’s rights, pretending that she has snagged a husband.”

“I was trying to keep him from worrying!” Camilla snapped. “Of course, you would never think of such a thing as trying to save someone pain or worry.”

“Whatever your reasoning,” he pointed out mildly, “’tis still a lie.”

“Fine words from a thief!” Camilla retorted hotly. “Or smuggler, or whatever you are. You don’t hesitate to steal carriages and kidnap people, or to knock a man senseless or draw an innocent bystander into a fight, but you draw the line, of course, at telling a small fib to ease the mind of a dying man!”

“Benedict…” Sedgewick shot him a quelling look. “Pay him no attention, Miss Ferrand. Benedict has little use for us ordinary mortals and our petty problems. It’s perfectly understandable that you would have told your grandfather that story, so that he could die more peacefully.”

“Thank you.” Camilla smiled at him gratefully and took another sip of her drink. It no longer felt like fire as it rolled down into her stomach; it merely sent a pleasant warmth spreading throughout her, lifting her spirits a little. She felt better already, she thought, and she realized that confession must indeed be good for the soul.

“You are a very understanding gentleman,” she told Sedgewick with a warm smile. “I am so glad I told you. You see, I didn’t want to lie to Grandpapa, but it seemed a small enough thing to do to make him happy. He was so sick that he didn’t ask me much about the man or how we had met.” She smiled faintly. “He didn’t even lecture me on the impropriety of becoming engaged without the man coming to ask for my hand from him first. He was quite happy about it, and after that he rested more quietly. Then he began to improve a little, and soon he began to feel much better. Before we knew it, he was cursing his valet and wanting to get up and go downstairs, and ringing a peal over the doctor’s head for not letting him. The better he felt, the more he asked me about my fiancé, and it became most awkward. Of course, I had to make everything up, and I felt so awful about lying to him. I regretted ever having told him, but I couldn’t tell him that I had invented the whole thing. I was afraid it would upset him so that he would have apoplexy again. Finally, I could not bear it any longer, and I fled back to Bath. But then I kept getting letters from him asking about my fiancé, wanting to know when I was going to bring him to Chevington Park to meet him. I have been trying ever since to figure out a way to get out of it.”

“Just tell him the fellow cried off,” Benedict suggested callously. “That will put an end to the matter. It is quite believable. If your escapade tonight was any indication, you would give any man adequate reason to get out of an engagement.”

Camilla swung on him. “You have the gall to blame me for what happened tonight? Anyway, my fiancé is not the sort of man who would ‘cry off’ an engagement, as you so vulgarly put it.”

He let out a bark of laughter. “That’s rich. Since your fiancé exists only in your imagination, I would imagine that he can do anything you wish.”

“I mean that the sort of man I have told my grandfather he is would never do such an ungentlemanly thing. You cannot understand that, no doubt, but most gentlemen have a code of honor.”

“Oh, aye, that’s a bit out of my reach, miss,” he replied, adopting a thick accent and tugging at an imaginary forelock like some dim-witted farmhand. “Not being used to Quality, like.”

“Do shut up, Benedict,” Sedgewick said mildly. “Obviously she could not tell her grandfather that either of them had broken off the engagement, because the old gentleman is not supposed to be upset.”

“That’s it exactly,” Camilla agreed, pleased to see that he understood. “Grandpapa is still in ill health, and the doctor says not to disturb him. He says it is a miracle that he hasn’t gone already. So I kept putting him off about when Mr. Lassiter and I were going to come to Chevington.”

“Mr. Lassiter?” Benedict asked.

“My fiancé.”

“Ah, yes, of course.”

“Would you let her get on with the story, Benedict?” Sedgewick asked. “I still haven’t heard about Aunt Beryl. That is what I’m waiting for.”

“Her!” Camilla said with much disgust, her lip curling. “She decided that Grandpapa needed her care to improve, so she moved to Chevington Park, girls and all. Aunt Lydia says she just took advantage of the fact that Grandpapa is too sick to kick her out. Well, he can’t, very well, when she came there on an errand of mercy. But I am sure that she has been driving him mad. And it put the housekeeper’s nose out of joint, as if she couldn’t take care of the house unless one of the family was there to keep an eye on her. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Grandpapa told Aunt Beryl that I was engaged. I never dreamed of his doing that. Of course, when I told him the lie, I didn’t expect him to even be alive a few days later.”

“I see. And Aunt Beryl’s knowing it puts a whole different light on the matter, I presume.”

“Oh, yes.” Camilla shook her head sadly and took another sip of her drink. Despite the awful situation she was in, she was beginning to feel quite mellow. “Aunt Beryl is the worst of my relatives. She has two of the most insipid daughters, whom she is always trying to marry off, and it has been a source of great pleasure to her that I have not married before either of them. However, she is always afraid that I will yet tie the knot before she unloads her brood on some poor, unsuspecting men.”

“Haven’t you told her of your philosophical position against marriage?” Benedict asked, his lips curling in an amused way that Camilla found quite irritating.

“Of course I have, but she doesn’t believe me. She thinks that I am simply making excuses for being an old maid, and that I would jump at the opportunity to marry, just as her daughters would.”

“An understandable misapprehension, considering the fact that you are pretending to be engaged.”

Camilla frostily ignored Benedict’s interruption, speaking only to Sedgewick. “Aunt Beryl didn’t believe it—that I was engaged, I mean. Apparently she and Grandpapa had quite a quarrel about it. Lydia learned all about it when she went down to Chevington Park. The doctor was so angry that he told Aunt Beryl not to bring the subject up again with Grandpapa. But Lydia writes me that the two of them keep sniping at each other about it. Aunt Beryl makes pointed remarks about the fact that I have not brought my fiancé to visit. Lydia says that Grandpapa defends me.” Tears sprang into her eyes at the thought of her grandfather’s loyalty. “Oh! I feel so wretched! I have lied to him, and I cannot bear to think what he will think of me when he finds out. Because he must find out. Lydia wrote me that I have to come. Grandpapa keeps asking for me. She is right. I must go. I have to be with Grandpapa. I am afraid that it won’t be much longer before he—”

She broke off, her throat clogging with tears. Sedgewick reached out and patted her hand. “There, there, my dear.”

Camilla smiled at him waterily. “You are very kind. None of this is your problem, and you have been the kindest of men to listen to me.”

“But what are you going to do?” he asked.

“I must tell them the truth.” She sighed. “Lydia thinks that we can stave off Aunt Beryl’s questions and barbs, but I don’t see how. I am certain that she will ask me all sorts of things about my fiancé that I won’t be able to answer. Things one should know. She will want to know what family he belongs to and how he is related to this person or that. I would be bound to get caught in a lie, and that would be even worse than telling everyone that I am not engaged. And what sort of excuse can I give for his not coming with me? I mean, it is a family crisis, and he wouldn’t let me travel down here all by myself. But I don’t think that I can bear to confess that I lied about it all and have Aunt Beryl look at me in that pitying, superior way she has. And Grandpapa—what if it upsets him so that he dies? It is just too awful to contemplate.”

She stood up abruptly, setting her cup down on the table with a clatter, and began to pace agitatedly about the room. “If only I could think of some way out of it! I have been cudgeling my brain for days. All the way down from London, I could think of nothing else. But I came up with nothing…nothing!”

There was a long moment of silence, then Sedgewick said quietly, “What if I thought of a solution?”

Both Camilla and Benedict swung toward him in astonishment.

“What the devil—” Benedict began.

“What?” Camilla asked, hope rising in her face. She started toward him eagerly. “Do you mean it? Have you really thought of a way out of my predicament?”

He nodded. “Perhaps. If you are willing to risk it.”

“I would do anything!” she exclaimed rashly. “Just tell me what it is!”

“What you need to do is arrive at Chevington Park tonight with a fiancé.”

“What?” Camilla frowned, confused. Had the fellow not understood what she had been telling him? “How could I— Who—”

Sedgewick smiled and nodded toward the other man in the room. “Benedict will be your fiancé.”

CHAPTER THREE

CAMILLA GAPED AT Sedgewick.

Across the room, Benedict expressed her fears more forcibly. “For God’s sake, Jermyn, have you run mad?”

“Not at all. If you will think about it, you will see that it is the perfect solution.”