He ended the tour in the back sitting room. It had been his mother’s favorite room, updated every year with something new, and now it was a confectioner’s blend of yellow silk wallpaper, red chinoiserie tables, pastel chairs, and a gleaming white mantelpiece. It boasted two walls of windows, catching the light almost all day, and now a beam of sunshine filled the whole room.
Mrs. Smollett arranged a tray of cold meats and a pitcher of lemonade on the table, then withdrew so that only a footman remained among them. Drawing her great skirts about her, Lady Turner landed on the pink sofa, triggering everyone else to sit, too. “Rosalind,” she commanded, “pour the lemonade.”
Lolly obeyed, silently. Meanwhile, Lord Turner picked up the conversation. “A fine home, as you said. Could use a little updating, but of course, you have only just inherited the title. With a little investment, you could make this one of the finest houses in England.”
Lolly handed Martin a glass of lemonade. For the briefest of seconds, her fingertips brushed against his. Her eyes, surprised, darted up. Martin looked away before he could see any more of her reaction.
“You could receive the King as it is right now, of course,” Lord Turner was saying, “but I’ve a design in mind that would only take three or five years, and then it would be fit for His Majesty.”
Martin couldn’t guess why he would care about preparing his house for a royal visit, when everyone knew King George never traveled from London except to Weymouth. “Indeed?”
“Oh yes. I’ve quite a few ideas already. Shall we go for a tour of the grounds tomorrow morning, then?”
Having never been engaged to marry before – in fact, never even having close friends go through the process – Martin supposed this was normal behavior for a father-in-law. Advice was the purview of families, and Lord Turner was about to be Martin’s family. In theory.
In practice, it felt rather like a hundred-pound stone had been tied about Martin’s neck, laced with a steel chain of deceit.
There was likely a cleverer response. At the moment, Martin could only summon acquiescence. “Tomorrow morning, then.”
Satisfied, Lord Turner bit into a slice of ham. The room was silent, save for a nervous titter from Charlotte. Martin watched as Lady Turner raised two imperial eyebrows at Lolly.
As if a puppet, Lolly opened her mouth. “We have been reading the newspapers on our journey. I wonder, Lord Preston, how you form an opinion of Mr. Hastings, since you have recently traveled to the East?”
Martin had been reading the papers, too, not only over the past few days but over the past few months, first in India and now here. Warren Hastings, former Governor General of Bengal, was charged with corruption.
He shifted his cup from one hand to the other, weighing his answer. Martin had a very strong personal opinion: Hastings was only a scapegoat for the very real problem of Englishmen making their fortunes on the backs of trusting Indian kingdoms. But it was popular among men like Turner to skewer Hastings, as if impeaching the one man would rid the Empire of its sickness.
Martin had never yet been able to win an argument against that kind of bombastic rhetoric.
“I have not met him in person,” Martin said carefully, “but I have met many men like him.”
Lord Turner shook his head. “The common man is not equal to the task of governing. That is the issue at heart, not the errors of one governor. I was saying this to the Prime Minister not three days ago, but of course, he wouldn’t listen.”
This was the other argument Martin tired of hearing. The East India Company had installed itself in the governments of India in order to better control trade, and now the peers in the House of Lords chose to blame all woes on the fact that merchants lived as kings.
He opened his mouth to parry, but Lolly beat him to it. “Was not John Adams the simple son of a farmer in Braintree, and now he is the ambassador to our King?”
She said this with a practiced nonchalance. Martin watched as Lord Turner first drew his brows together in annoyance, and then – receiving a game, playful smile from Lolly – softened into a doting father. “Would that I could view the world through the eyes of a woman or a babe, eh Preston?”
Before he could think, Martin forced a chuckle. It was the wrong thing, of course. He knew it immediately. But he was so much more comfortable humoring rather than arguing. He didn’t even regret it until Lolly stiffened. In the same instant that Lord Turner changed the subject, pleased with himself, Lolly disappeared back into the pale, listless stick she had been this past day and a half.
Martin looked away. Up at the ceiling. Down at his plate. Anywhere but at Lolly. No wonder she refused to marry him. Even now, in the safety of his own home, Martin couldn’t help her. Couldn’t protect her from setdowns and rumors and barbs. He was nothing but an idealist without backbone, a dreamer without reality.
She poured him more lemonade, and he accepted. There was nothing else to do.
?
Lying did not grow easier. Lolly had hoped that the more she pretended she would marry Lord Preston, the less her stomach would clench in protest. Instead, by their first morning in Northfield Hall, she felt permanently queasy.
Lolly had only ever visited relatives at their country homes. She was accustomed to running off with cousins to explore the grounds or participating in organized parlor games. Northfield Hall felt empty in contrast, no one around but the servants passing from room to room. Papa and Lord Preston went off touring the property before Lolly arrived to breakfast, and she spent the morning sewing with Mama, Charlotte, and Louisa. She tried to concentrate – she was adorning a pair of stockings as a gift for Papa – but where usually embroidery calmed her mind, that day it only scattered it further. Each push of the needle reminded her she had put herself in this situation; each pull told her she would soon meet her punishment.
It didn’t help that Charlotte and Louisa wouldn’t stop talking about her marriage. “It’s not so fine a house that you can brag about it to Ursula,” Louisa – the most pragmatic of her sisters – reasoned, “but it is a fine house, and with the improvements Papa suggests you may be proud of it.”
“Pride goeth before the fall,” Mama scolded. “Lolly will be happy in whatever house her husband provides her.”
“I think it is romantic,” Charlotte sighed. “He’s so madly in love with you he wanted to bring you home immediately.”
Lolly turned her head so Mama wouldn’t see her roll her eyes. As if love had anything to do with this whole ridiculous scheme.
