A Gamble on Love (28 page)

Relia shook her head. “Political smoke and
mirrors. I should have known.”

“
Would you rather I had to be carried
home each night?”

“
As if that would gain you
votes!”

Thomas thought it was a propitious time to
change the subject. “Has Miss Aldershot shown any signs of
softening?” he inquired.

“
Gussie will not do more than bid Mr.
Westover good morning,” Relia replied, “yet she works for your
campaign as if she herself were running for office. But with all of
you out of the house from seven to midnight, there is little
opportunity for any form of reconciliation.”

Thomas stretched and yawned, the comfort of
the sitting room, the pleasure of his wife’s presence, making him
careless of his words. “I have promised myself we will go away
somewhere after the election, perhaps back to Tunbridge Wells,
where I plan to spend at least a week in bed.”

Silence. Thomas’s eyes snapped open,
encountering the stunned look on his wife’s face. “Devil it!” he
growled. “Do you think I’m made of iron? That I’m not aware I am
married to a woman of wit and beauty? A siren who waits in her lair
to taunt me night after night, even though she’s a Lady and I’m a
lowly Cit? Do you actually think I do not care? Well, woman, say
something!”

“
I think,” said his wife, rising to her
feet, “that you have endured too many days of seven to midnight and
that it will only get worse. If you wish, the
siren
will avoid this sitting room for the
duration of the campaign.”

“
Good God, no!” Thomas roared. “These
few moments are my only sanity. You”—he swallowed, face grim. She
was the well from which he filled his soul. Though until this very
moment, he’d never admitted it. “I need these few quiet moments,”
he said at last. “If you do not mind.”

“
Of course not,” his wife murmured,
eyes demurely downcast. “Goodnight, Thomas.” She stood and crossed
to her bedchamber, head high, chin in the air. She opened the door,
her shoulder slumped. Slowly, she turned around to face him.
“Thomas . . . I would be pleased to return to Tunbridge Wells.
Goodnight.” The door closed softly behind her, leaving Thomas to
stare after her, not quite believing his ears.

Mr. Blacklock’s sketch of the Whig
candidate for MP was so successful, portraying Thomas Lanning in a
noble pose, yet with his eyes somehow promising he would never
forget he was a man of the people, that Carleton Westover ordered
it printed on enough handbills and posters to wallpaper the entire
borough. This, of course, also did much to ensure the vote of every
printer and papermaker, not to mention those put to work painting
bright blue and red cockades in each corner. And then there were
the drapers who provided endless ells of blue and red fabric for
banners, streamers, and the ribbon bouquets the candidate’s
supporters wore pinned to their lapels.
Buy
local, buy local
, intoned Mr. Westover each day. And
so they did. Even if it meant driving loads of country-made goods
up to London, where Mr. Lanning donated them to the
poor.

Mr. Hugh Blacklock’s caricature of the
opposing candidate was equally successful. Enough so that heated
words, exacerbated by the eviction of widows, escalated into
rowdyism, with Mr. Trevor’s followers ripping down, first, their
candidate’s unflattering caricatures and, shortly thereafter,
spilling over into ridding the walls of Mr. Lanning’s portrait as
well. Since both aspiring members of Parliament had set up
headquarters in rival inns a scant half-mile apart, the controversy
rapidly turned physical.

If anyone had asked her, Relia thought when
regaled with this news one morning at breakfast, she would have had
to admit she had every confidence in Big Mike Bolt. One look at the
bruiser, and, after the initial shock, she had not doubted his
ability to handle any sort of violence. She should be appalled,
but, truth to tell, she felt only satisfaction at the routing of
Twyford’s bully boys. Not that she would ever tell Thomas so.

As if she would have the opportunity! For in
spite of their growing accommodation to each other’s foibles,
precious moments of private conversation were few and far between.
Thomas was gone off to The Hound and Bear before she rose, and came
home long after exhaustion had forced her to seek her bed. Quite
incredibly, she missed him. Yes, she admitted it. Relia’s fingers
paused over the prize ribbons for the Winter Festival that she,
Gussie, and Livvy were assembling in the morning room. She even
missed their quarrels. Yet she was proud of him. Thomas Lanning was
going to be a splendid MP. One who would serve his people. One who
was likely to rise, like rich cream, above the other four hundred
and two Members of Parliament.

“
You have visitors, madam.” There was
something ominous in Biddeford’s tone that snapped Relia out of her
reverie in a trice. Gussie and Livvy, also alerted, ceased their
low-voiced conversation. “It is Lord and Lady Hubert, madam. And
Mr. Trevor.”

Livvy gasped. Miss Aldershot clutched her
heart. Relia’s body went cold.

Thomas! Dragonslayer! Where are you when I
need you?

“
Biddeford, you old fool,” Lord Hubert
shouted, pushing the butler out of the way. “How dare you keep us
cooling our heels in the hall? Aurelia, Miss Aldershot, good day.
And who the devil are you?” he demanded, catching sight of Miss
Lanning.

“
Ungrateful child!” spat Lady Hubert,
hard on her husband’s heels. “You have ruined us all. Disgraced the
family name. We have come to give you a last chance to redeem
yourself, to allow your poor mama and papa—God rest their souls!—to
lie easy in their graves. Tell her, Twyford,” she declaimed, with a
dramatic thrust of her hand toward her only son. “Tell her she must
immediately abandon this monstrous behavior.”

“
Morning, cuz,” drawled The Terrible
Twyford. “Ah . . . the exquisite Miss Lanning.” He
bowed.

To Relia’s disgust, Livvy colored up
and simpered.
Good God, had the chit no
discrimination?

To Mr. Trevor’s credit, he displayed more
sense than his esteemed parents, calmly ushering them to the
morning room’s lyre-back chairs before taking a seat directly
across from his cousin. “All alone, Relia?” he inquired softly.
“Your houseful of hucksters have deserted you?”

“
You know quite well they are out
canvassing. As you should be. Or is Gravenham doing all your
work—buying outsiders willing to vote as he tells them?”

“
Naughty, naughty, dear cuz.
Association with your cur of a husband has obviously tainted your
reasoning.”

Livvy leaped to her feet, Mr. Trevor’s open
admiration of her person forgotten. “You are despicable!” she
cried.

“
Olivia!” Gussie Aldershot put an arm
around Miss Lanning and murmured in her ear. Both women subsided
onto the gold- and cream-striped settee.

At least Livvy was no longer dazzled by The
Terrible Twyford, Relia thought as she gathered her courage. “If
you have come to insult me,” she said, “you may leave now. I have
no wish to hear anything you might say.”

“
Come, come, dear girl.” Twyford
offered the smile that had once presaged his tearing the wings off
butterflies. “We are here as your family. Because we are concerned
for you. We wish to rescue you from the monster you chose so
misguidedly. Come with us now, we beg you. Fly back to the safety
of Middlethorpe Manor and escape all this nonsense. We know you
cannot like it. Such a quiet country mouse—always so grave and
bookish. You stand beside Lanning, pale and suffering. ’Tis plain
to see you hate every moment—”

“
That’s not true!” Relia cried. “I have
smiled until my face cracks, shaken hands until I cannot move my
fingers. I have admired every last baby and half-grown child in the
borough, poured so many cups of tea I sometimes imagine doing it in
my sleep. I am a good campaigner. Never say I am not!”

“
Methinks the lady doth protest too
much.”

“
Go away, Twyford. You are not wanted
here.”

“
We will not go away!” Lord Hubert
roared. “This is my brother’s home.”

“
This is
my
home. My husband’s home. As long as you speak
ill of him, you are not welcome here.” And she meant every word of
it. Even if she had liked the Hubert Trevors and their abominable
son, she would have repudiated them today. Because they had
insulted Thomas. Her husband. The Cit.

The Whig candidate for the House of
Commons.

Who was somehow standing in the doorway,
large and vital, looking ready to harness thunderbolts and cast the
intruders from the room. For a moment Relia felt dizzy. He had
heard her. Every word.

And God bless Biddeford who must have sent
for him. Or perhaps someone had seen the Trevor carriage rolling
through the village.

“
I heard you needed a dragonslayer, my
dear,” he said, but his unwavering gaze was fixed on his opponent.
“Lady Hubert, Lord Hubert, Trevor, when this election is over, we
will honor the family connection—at christenings and weddings,
perhaps. But at the moment we find your visit most inappropriate.
Just imagine what our respective supporters may say about such a
private meeting. I fear both our candidacies could suffer. Do you
not agree, Trevor? Biddeford, I believe Lord Hubert and his family
are leaving. Would you be kind enough to show them out?”

Christenings and
weddings?
Relia did not even notice the Trevors’s
departure. Thomas spoke of christenings. Whose
christenings?

Foolish female, she knew quite well what he
meant. The christening of little Lannings, who would tumble over
the park, race across the bridge to the rotunda, which would
become—as it once had for her—a castle, a pirate ship, Sherwood
forest, a high mountain, a beleaguered desert fort.

Her children. Thomas’s
children
. Not so startling, after all. They were
married, were they not? And among his campaign promises, had her
husband not included a return to Tunbridge Wells?

Miss Aldershot took Livvy firmly by the
arm and led her out of the room, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Thomas
Lanning alone in the morning room. The look on both faces, usually
well hidden behind their public façades, was suddenly naked.
Vulnerable. Dear God, Gussie thought, how she envied them. For she
had been even more of a fool than Relia. What good was pride in the
long, lonely hours of the night?
Forgiveness is divine
.

But the men came home so late. When, during
this interminable campaign, would she ever have the opportunity . .
. ?

She was mistaken. Carleton Westover, Thaddeus
Singleton, Patrick Fallon, Hugh Blacklock, Nicholas, and Big Mike
Bolt were all gathered in the entry hall, a solid phalanx
overseeing the departure of the opposing candidate and his family.
Gussie felt a surge of warmth. She and Relia had found a most
excellent dragonslayer. One with a great many assistants.

“
Mr. Westover,” declared Gussie
Aldershot, “I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

~ * ~

To the ladies’ astonishment, the
candidate and his Election Agent forsook the nightly revels at The
Hound and Bear and joined the family at dinner. Even Nick’s excited
revelation that it was he, while acting as messenger for the
Election Committee, who had noticed the Trevor carriage and
galloped
ventre à terre
for
help, could not keep the three Lannings from noticing the startling
change in the hostile atmosphere that customarily radiated between
Gussie Aldershot and Carleton Westover.

“
Smelling of April and May,” Livvy
giggled in Relia’s ear later that evening as she turned pages for
her sister-in-law’s offerings on the pianoforte.

“
More like September and October,”
Relia shot back, then missed a note or two as she realized how far
her good manners had fallen. It was the Election, of course. Her
association with so many vulgar people.

No, it was not. It was having another young
woman in the house. Someone to talk to . . . almost like a sister.
Indeed, Livvy was a sister, was she not? And in another year they
would brave London society together. She, the wife of a Member of
Parliament, and Miss Olivia Lanning, his sister.

Once again, Relia’s fingers faltered.
Somehow London no longer seemed so formidable, a
ton
jungle to be carefully avoided by
remaining in the tranquility of Kent. Astonishing. When had she
begun to look up and see a world beyond Pevensey Park?

The day she sat at the table in Sir Gilbert
Bromley’s office and saw Thomas Lanning walk through the door.
Relia’s lips curved into a smile.

She must have finished her étude, for
the men were applauding. Relia managed a grimace of a smile in
response, then hastened to one of the tall windows, hiding her face
as she pulled aside the drapery and peered out into the
night.
Love at first sight. Impossible.
Quite impossible
.

It had indeed been love at first sight,
though she had been fighting most gallantly against it ever
since.
Thomas Lanning, the Cit. Thomas
Lanning, Prince of the Exchange. Thomas Lanning, Member of
Parliament.

Dear God, she loved him! How dared he do this
to her? For in Thomas Lanning’s life she came in a distant fourth
at best. After Politics. Livvy. Nick.