Page 11 of Christmas Comes to Little Valentine

“I know I said he’s a top-lofty devil, and he is, there’s no getting away from it, but I doubt we’ll see much of him. He’s not in the least bit sociable, even at family gatherings. Especially at family gatherings,” he said with a snort. “I think we all get on his nerves.”

Meg glared at him, wondering how he couldn’t see this was not the least bit reassuring.

“And your grandmother is the Dowager Duchess of Hawkney,” she said, fighting back a sudden desire to fall into strong hysterics.

“She is,” he agreed.

“And what is she like?” Meg asked, hoping against hope that he would say she was a dotty old woman with a fondness for cats and peppermints and did not know what day of the week it was.

“A tyrant,” he said cheerfully. “I suspect you’ll like her. She doesn’t hold with women being timid and placid and under a man’s thumb. She’ll expect you to have a mind of your own, and to use it too. Only speak up, she’s rather deaf but hates any suggestion of infirmity. She’ll accuse you of muttering if you don’t speak loudly enough.”

“Thank you for the advice,” she said sourly, for it was a good deal too little and far too late. How could she back out now, when he had arranged Betty to work for her for the next three weeks and paid for their travel and a hotel, not to mention the small matter of an entire wardrobe?

“It will be all right,” he said, his voice gentle now. “Truly. Actually, I think they’ll all love you, and they’ll be so relieved that I’m finally getting leg shackled that they won’t care a straw that you have no dowry.”

“Except you’re not,” she reminded him. “Don’t you care that, if this ludicrous scheme actually works, they might be disappointed?”

He had the grace to look somewhat unnerved by this suggestion. “It’s only three weeks! They can’t fall in love with you that much in such a short time. They’ll get over it. Besides, they are used to being disappointed in me, it will hardly be a shock.”

There was a remarkable depth of bitterness in that last remark. It struck Meg as very revealing. Whatever his family were like, he felt the sting of their disapproval more than he let on. The question was, were they right to feel so? Sadly, she rather thought they might be. From what she had seen of Mr Ashford so far, he was kind and charming, very reckless and altogether too ready to avoid anything that smacked of responsibility. She did not doubt that his face, his fortune, and his winning manners made his way through life altogether too easy and could well imagine why the idea of marriage and family, and the obligations they would demand of him, appeared dull and confining in contrast.

“You’re not going to bolt, are you?” he asked, frowning down at her.

“Yes, I’ll just trot back to London and carry on freezing to death in the doorway where you found me,” she said tartly. “Precisely how many options do you think I have now?”

He grinned at her. “Well, I’m glad—not for the situation,” he added hurriedly. “But I’m glad you will not back out. You should look upon it as an adventure. For three weeks only, you can be someone else, live another life, and then you can go back to being a respectable governess, if that’s what you prefer.”

“Not anywhere your family is likely to run into me, I can’t,” she said, wondering if he had even considered that as a possibility.

He frowned, confirming her suspicions that he did not look farther ahead than the next few days and that the future was something vague and far off that he preferred not to consider. “Well, we could send you abroad if you liked the idea? Do you speak French?”

“French, Italian, German, Greek, and Latin,” she replied, not above feeling rather smug at his expression of astonishment.

“You don’t say?”

“I do, actually,” she said, rather surprised at the delight and admiration in his eyes. The notion of an educated female horrified most gentlemen.

“Good Lord. You must have a brain the size of a carthorse in that dainty head of yours. However does it fit?”

Meg blushed, undecided whether or not this was a compliment.

“Well, no wonder you think me a foolish fellow. I rather think I am compared to you. Are you good at maths and science and dreadful things like that too?”

“Exceptionally,” she said, surprising herself this time. She had quickly realised no one other than her father had thought her cleverness was a good thing.

“Well, I never,” he said quietly.

He looked suddenly rather dispirited, and Meg wondered if she had made a mistake and he regretted having taken on a female with a brain. “I can pretend to be vapid and stupid if you prefer,” she said, though not without a resentful bite to the words.

“What? Heavens, no. Don’t do that. Grandmama will adore you. She’ll just wonder what on earth you are doing with a dull fellow like me,” he said with a snort. “I’m afraid I was never very good at… well, learning. Hawkney was, of course. He excelled at everything. You’ll probably get on like a house on fire.”

The idea did not seem to please him.

“You did not enjoy learning?” she asked, finding this an odd concept.

He shrugged and leaned down, snatching a piece of long grass growing beside the wall and systematically tearing it into small pieces. “I don’t know. Not much. I liked some of it, but it never stuck. I preferred… oh, never mind. Come along, let us get inside before you really do freeze. It’s damned cold. You need a warm fire and a good meal, and you’ll feel much more the thing.”

Meg did not argue, for it truly was bitterly cold. The idea of a fire and a hot meal was too appealing to refuse, yet she wished he had told her what he had preferred to learning. She determined to find out a bit more about her would be fiancé over dinner, for if she was to convince his family that she intended to marry him, she would certainly need to know.