He rose from the chair a changed man. “Miss Welles, if you will permit me to leave your bedside, I have every intention of making you a happy woman.” Cheered to the core by her expectant glow, he added, “I am off to my barber’s!” The earl departed C.J.’s bedchamber to the silvery sound of her laughter. Never had he heard music more delightful.
“And not a moment too soon!” quipped the countess, who availed herself of the vacant chair by C.J.’s bed and took her “niece’s” hands. “I have been tardy in properly thanking you for saving my life, Cassandra.”
“There was no other alternative, Lady Dalrymple. No thanks are necessary.” C.J. swallowed the last of her hot broth.
“Nevertheless, I have been remiss. But have taken the steps necessary to rectify it.”
C.J., still finding it difficult to maintain an unmuddied thought process, gave the countess a curious look.
“Some weeks ago, I visited my solicitors,” Lady Dalrymple began. “At the outset of our interview, Mr. Oxley and old Mr. Morton were quite convinced I was addled, since, apart from my dearly departed Alexander, I have no other children and yet I had come to them with the express purpose of discussing my heir. After my illness, and yet again since your accident, I was reminded how precious is the gift of our time on this green and gilded sphere. I know no other way to thank you, Cassandra, for the joy you have brought to me since our paths had the good fortune to cross. I instructed Oxley and Morton to draw up formal papers of adoption, naming you as my heiress. After my death, although you will be unable to become Countess of Dalrymple, you will inherit my wealth and my personal effects, including the emerald ring I have oft caught you admiring. And as no records can be produced stating that you are not Bertie Tobias’s only child, the solicitors agree that your inheritance of Manwaring is unchallenged. My brother is quite fond of you, Cassandra. I feared I would have to bring him ’round to the wisdom of my view, but once the papers were drawn up, I am told that Albert signed them with a characteristic dramatic flourish. Everything is now legal and binding.”
C.J. regarded her benefactress with a widening stare of dawning comprehension. “Aunt Euphoria . . .” Her voice cracked with emotion.
“’Tis no less than you deserve, Cassandra—to become the Marchioness of Manwaring. And though he is capable of finding a more than adequate conclusion to his current conundrum, your new status has the happy effect of relieving the Earl of Darlington—if he is astute enough to realize it—of the agony of being forced to choose between love and duty.”
“I—I don’t know what to say, Lady Dalrymple—other than thank you. This is indeed the most generous thing anyone has ever done for me,” C.J. said with stunned appreciation. Her eyes welled with tears.
“Where my brother and I travel next,” the countess said simply, “we shall require neither lands nor title.”
The two women embraced, C.J. feeling warm and secure in the dowager’s arms. “I love you not for what you have done for me, but for who you are, Aunt Euphoria.”
“I could very well say the same about you, Niece.” Lady Dalrymple kissed Cassandra’s forehead, then smoothed her hand over C.J.’s brow with a maternal caress. “Cassandra Jane Welles, you have undergone more travails since the day you arrived in Bath than most young ladies experience in a lifetime. I grow quite fatigued myself just thinking on it. Now let us both take some rest,” she whispered, then left the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her.
As C.J. finished the last of her broth, she noticed a folded note placed under the saucer. Curious, she opened the unfamiliar seal and read its brief contents.
There was no alternative. She must travel to London by the very next Royal Mail.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wherein our heroine embarks upon an eye-opening tour of London town and is reunited with one of her benefactors.
THE GLEAMING, pale yellow mail coach rumbled along the outskirts of Bath bound for London. C.J. had not counted on how sore she had become from lying abed for so long. Her ankle joints were still somewhat swollen, and her spine from stem to stern, as well as her rib cage, ached with each bump in the uneven road. Every rut over which the carriage wheels clattered at their breakneck pace was the father to a fresh spasm of pain. Compounding all, she continued to suffer from the ill effects of morning sickness, and her stomach lurched every time the coach did.
Having charmed the driver into permitting a fifth passenger, as she was quite slender and traveled with naught but a carpetbag, C.J. found herself wedged between two rather taciturn gentlemen, a nephew and uncle, apparently, on their way to London to visit their hatters and tailors.
On the opposite seat, it was another story. A husband and wife, who had evidently been married for some years, began their quarrel at the crack of the coachman’s whip outside Leake’s booksellers and had not ceased squabbling since. He complained that she used rouge to paint her face in a fruitless effort to appear youthful. She parried with a gripe about his thrift. Had they a carriage of their own, they would not be forced to endure intolerably cramped quarters with strangers. The husband riposted: had she less of a penchant for bonnets, jewels, and other finery, they would have a tolerably fine equipage. And so it went, for several miles. C.J. pretended to be asleep, which was a shame because the Wiltshire countryside was lovely to behold. The verdant scene outside the unshuttered window offered an uninterrupted view of grazing sheep and cattle enjoying their quotidian existences unconcerned with the rush and bustle that necessitated the Royal Mail’s haste to traverse their pastoral domain.
As
