Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Worthe House, London

April 1820

O akley gazed around the dinner table, taking in the charming domestic scene with no little satisfaction. His sister, Lady Scarlett Worthe, presided over her London table beautifully; she had decorated the middle with a profusion of spring flowers, cherry blossoms and peonies and some white flower Oakley swore he had never seen before, all surrounding the gleaming silver candelabra which marched proudly down the middle. Scarlett’s husband, Lord Worthe, smiled at her from his seat at the other end of the table.

Oakley allowed his gaze to roam, taking in Lord and Lady Tipton, Adelaide—now Lady Kemerton—and her husband Lord Kemerton, his baby sister Frederica, or rather Duchess, and her husband, the Duke of Penrith.

And then him . The numbers were matched save for his place. He threw the numbers as he always did. At least , he thought gloomily, Scarlett does not put an empty chair beside me . His other sister Adelaide always did, and then made a great show of having the footman take it away. “I thought you might invite someone,” she invariably protested when he mentioned it to her.

Scarlett rose from her seat, wine glass in one hand and her fork in another as she tapped gently to get everyone’s attention. “I thought we might forgo the separation this evening,” she said with her customary sweet firmness. “Let us all continue to enjoy our time together in the drawing room.”

With that she moved away from her chair, Frederica and then Lady Tipton and Adelaide trailing behind her, then the men behind them. As the lowest-ranking male, it meant that Oakley entered the drawing room last, finding his three sisters already settling together onto a small sofa, opposite which was one chair. “Sit there,” Adelaide instructed him, with an indelicate point of her finger.

“There? Mother, perhaps you would…” He turned towards Lady Tipton who smiled and shook her head, then took a seat nearer to the fire, beside her husband. The other men also seemed to scuttle into some preordained arrangement.

Leaving him the chair.

He walked towards it suspiciously, sensing that something was afoot, something everyone else knew about save for him. They all looked up at him expectantly, gentle smiles urging him into place. “What is this about?” he asked suspiciously as he sank into the chair. It was a nice, plush wingback; clearly they wanted him to get comfortable.

“Can we not wish to speak to our brother?” Frederica asked innocently.

“Yes,” he said, drawing the word out. “But what do you wish to speak of?”

“Let us get drinks first,” Scarlett said just as her housekeeper and a maid entered bearing the trays with tea and coffee. There was a short silence while everyone was served; Scarlett poured Oakley’s for him, adding a great deal of cream and sugar, just as he liked it. As she handed it to him, he cast his eyes longingly towards the fire where Worthe and the duke were laughing in reply to some tale Kem was telling; Oakley strongly suspected he might rather be among them instead of being spoken to by his sisters like a schoolboy called up by the headmaster!

“How busy the next week is!” Adelaide exclaimed as she took a sip of her tea. “I declare I have received five times as many invitations as I had even last week!”

“As have I,” Frederica reported. “So many invitations!”

“I daresay that anyone who plans to be here for the Season is here now, and I wholly expect the next weeks to be a whirlwind.” Scarlett also took a sip of her tea, her eyes on Oakley above the rim of her cup. “A whirlwind of amusements.”

Oakley looked at the trio, all of whom returned looks of practised innocence. “Yes-s-s,” he said again. “The Season is diverting, but I am not so silly as to imagine that we are having this conference to discuss how much diversion we might anticipate.”

“Oakley, it is time for you to marry,” Lord Tipton boomed abruptly from across the room. “We have shilly-shallied long enough now. Find a woman, marry her, and get started on the next generation!”

His outburst was greeted by despairing looks from his nieces, a not-so-subtle nudge to the ribs from his wife, and repressed guffaws from the other men in the room. Oakley twisted in his seat to look at him. “Sir, forgive me, but my sisters and their husbands have led you to believe it is such an easy matter!”

“It is an easy matter when one does not go scampering about London, seeming to purposely seek out the unsuitable—what?” The last was directed at Lady Tipton, who had more forcefully intervened in the scene, interrupting her husband with whispers in his ear. When his lordship spoke again, he was far less gruff.

“This business of the past years…Damian, the title?—”

“The emergence of an untold quantity of sisters from various cellars and corners of England,” Adelaide added, making them all laugh.

Lady Tipton chuckled. “Happy gossip along with the not-so-happy. In any case, the family has provided ample diversion for the ton , to be sure.”

Lord Tipton rose from his chair. Oakley—and he suspected his sisters as well—watched with fondness at the ease with which he stood. Lord Tipton suffered from rheumatism, and wintry months were more difficult with each passing year. Every winter they all worried it would never abate, and every spring they were relieved to see it did, at least partly. He had one hand on the walking stick he always kept with him now, but leant on it less heavily than he had in recent weeks as he paced towards the mantel.

“What I mean to say is that new scandals, old scandals, all of it has—may I say tarnished?—the family reputation. People do not know whether we are coming or going these days.”

“The ton will move on to the next thing soon, I am sure,” Oakley replied uneasily.

“I still hear so much nonsense,” Lady Tipton exclaimed. “Tales of Damian’s bastard children, hidden fortunes… Why, Lady Abernathy told me that she heard Damian had planned a scheme to have Oakley killed!”

“To be fair, he might have done,” Oakley said cheerfully. “Only it failed because here am I!”

Lady Tipton cried out as if a murderer had just burst into the room, then raised her fan and began to waft herself vigorously. Ever the caretaker, Frederica rose and went to her.

Kem spoke then, and Oakley had to crane his neck a little to see him. “What his lordship means to say, Oakley, is that we should very much like to become uninteresting for a while.”

“Hear, hear,” Oakley said, raising his coffee cup. “To the courting of tediousness!” No one laughed and Oakley lowered his cup. “Well then. How does one go about pursuing dullness?”

“There is one more subject that raises a great deal of tattle among the matrons,” Lady Tipton said. “And that is your marriage.”

“My marriage? Not much to say in that quarter, is there?” Oakley forced a heartier chuckle than he felt. A niggling suspicion had begun to form, and he was wary of it. To get ahead of any demands, he added, “Happily, I am only five-and-twenty, so I have plenty of time.”

Lord Tipton began to shake his head at the word ‘only’. “Our surest hope to take the eyes of the gossips off you—and by extension the family—is for you to settle down. There is nothing to say about a man who has done what men must do: take wives, beget heirs.”

“A titled man who is not married will always be of interest to everyone,” Penrith added quietly. “You simply cannot imagine the things that go on. I had only just begun to take calls of condolence for my first wife’s death when a young lady attempted to put me in a compromising position and make demands upon my honour.”

A gasp went around the room with Adelaide adding, “Hussy!” while Scarlett enquired, “How did she do that?”

“You must marry, Oakley,” Lord Tipton said firmly, overriding the twins’ comments. “There is nothing else for it. Yes, you are a bit young, but I should like to dandle the future earl on my knee before I die, and you never know when the daughters will come first.” He looked fondly but pointedly at Adelaide, whose daughter Susanna had graced Avonwyke’s nursery the previous autumn.

“So now I need to not only marry but begin at once to produce children?” Oakley cried out with mock dismay. In truth, he loved children. He was already enjoying his role as uncle to Penrith’s children and eagerly anticipated the day he could scamper about with little Susanna—at present, he was always terrified that he would squash or break her.

“That is the natural order of things,” Kem added.

“And an agreeable occupation it is.” Worthe came behind Scarlett, bent forwards, and placed a kiss on her cheek. “But one must not presume to imagine the begetting of a child is any easier than finding a wife.”

Scarlett flushed and looked down at her lap as almost every pair of eyes in the room sought her immediately. She and Worthe would be married two years come autumn, and Oakley in particular had forborne to ask for news in that quarter.

Wishing to move the attention away from her, Oakley observed amiably, “Finding possible wives has never been my difficulty.”

“It is not merely finding one,” Lord Tipton warned, and Oakley was relieved to see his little gambit had worked. “It is finding an excellent match, one that will show the ton that the Richmond line is as well regarded as ever it was.”

“No actresses, then?” Oakley asked innocently.

Lord Tipton gave him a severe frown, but it was Adelaide who leapt into the discussion.

“In fact,” she said, with a glance at her sisters, “we intend to help you find someone.”

“I thank you, but no,” Oakley said firmly. “I do not need my younger sisters playing matchmaker for me.”

“Matchmaker! We would never dream of doing anything of the sort,” Scarlett assured him. “Never!”

Adelaide added, “We only mean to make some introductions.”

“Introductions? To whom? When?”

“As it stands,” Scarlett said, “we each have a particular lady we believe would do very well as Lady Oakley.”

“We are not disinterested parties,” Adelaide added. “She will be our sister, a fourth Richmond lady.”

Frederica nodded vigorously. “And just as you came in search of me, so too shall we aid in the search for her. ’Tis a family affair!”

“Absolutely,” Adelaide said.

“Absolutely not ,” Oakley cried out. This entire scheme had taken a turn not to his liking. “Sisters, much as I love you all dearly, I must remind you that it is a brother’s duty to see his sisters settled. It is not, however, a sister’s duty to return the favour!”

“On that point, I fear we must disagree,” Adelaide said smoothly while the other two nodded beside her. “Indeed on both points! Not only do we feel it our duty, we do, in fact, think you need it. Need I remind you of Mrs Marshall?”

Oakley rolled his eyes. “How was I to know that her dead husband was not, in fact, dead?”

“Lady Elizabeth Fairchild?” Scarlett mentioned with a wry tilt of her head.

Oakley huffed angrily. “Or so I believed, yes. Ha, ha, ‘that gudgeon Oakley made love to Lady Elizabeth’s maid who was pretending to be her’. Very droll.”

Worthe, still standing behind Scarlett, grinned as he added, “Miss Huntington.”

“That was not my fault,” Oakley protested. “She was?—”

“A greedy social climber,” Adelaide announced. “Everyone knew it.”

“Everyone but me,” Oakley replied, his pique having disappeared into gloom. It had been the laugh of society it seemed, him making a cake of himself for a lady whose only object was a title, any title, and she did not care what manner of a man was attached to it. Miss Huntington’s family were newly raised from trade, and they were all eager to leave their working-man’s past behind them.

The truth was that when he had courted Miss Huntington, he had done so while nursing a broken heart. Miss Bess Leighton—or Mrs Beamish as she was now called—was Scarlett’s dear childhood friend and was, in Oakley’s mind, the most perfect woman ever to live. Everyone was forever accusing him of falling in and out of love too easily, but with Bess it was different. Vastly different , and the evidence of that was the fact that even now, nearly two years on from the day he met her, he still burned for her as much as he ever had.

Despite the fact that she had gone and married someone else.

With Bess still in his mind, he knew he had wanted to love Miss Huntington more than he actually had . Nevertheless, he courted her with alacrity. He had been on the verge of offering for her, had been making his plans as Lord Tipton’s grandmother’s ring was reverently removed from the vault and sent to the jewellers for cleaning and the addition of two exquisite pearls. Then the scandal over his title had erupted and the lady had turned tail. Within days she had accepted the hand of a different viscount.

Perhaps I do need help. Oakley again beheld his sisters, each of whom wore her domestic tranquillity like a mantle. Even while he looked, Frederica cast a look at Penrith that seemed to say, ‘ Just a moment more with my mulish brother, darling, and I shall be in your more pleasing company ’.

Would it have been like that with Bess? Would they be here, amongst his family, contented and peaceful, their love for one another proclaimed with every gesture and smile?

Never mind that , he scolded himself. She is married now, and happily so. She might even have a child on the way, or will soon.

“Very well, then,” Oakley conceded. “An introduction or two to appropriate young ladies would not go amiss. But one matchmaker will do! I do not require all three of you working on my behalf. Surely I am not such a lost cause as all that!”

His sisters again exchanged glances. “As it stands it will not be three of us playing matchmaker,” Scarlett said.

“Thank heav?—”

“Four,” said Adelaide. “There will be four. Aunt Letitia insists on being a part of things.”