They exchanged knowing glances, but Olivia was confident they would not be a danger to her father. Lord Embleton was another matter. They had driven him away from Harraby Hall, and perhaps they might drive him away from Leicestershire, too.
The Franklyns arrived just then, and Olivia was drawn into Lady Esther’s orbit for a while as she circulated among her various relations. After a while, she noticed that Mr Franklyn was sitting a little apart, a newspaper open on his knee, although he was not looking at it. Instead he was watching all that was going on in the room, a little smile on his lips.
Olivia crossed the room to sit beside him. “Shall you join the hunt tomorrow, Mr Franklyn?”
“No, I am not a hunting man,” he said equably. “I like a horse well enough if it jogs me safely from one place to another, but jumping hedges and walls and streams has never greatly appealed to me. I shall watch the departure, I think, for Lady Esther will want to be there, but after that we shall retreat to the house… or perhaps pay some calls. Whatever my wife wishes to do.”
“Do you always do as she wishes?” Olivia said.
He chuckled. “Not always, no. A man likes to be the master in his own house and have matters ordered to his liking, but in gatherings such as this… this is Lady Esther’s territory. Here I defer to her experience and understanding of the rules of society. I was not born to this sort of life, unlike my wife… or you, Lady Olivia. I was nothing but an ordinary attorney in Newcastle until my unexpected inheritance gave me wealth and the ability to take a higher position in the world. I have been fortunate tofind a wife to show me the way, and it pleases me to watch her moving in her proper milieu now and then.”
“Do you ever go back to Newcastle?”
“Sometimes. I am not ashamed of my background — no one should ever be ashamed of what he once was, or of what he is, for that matter. We are all equal in God’s eyes, after all, from the King down to the lowliest beggar on the streets.”
“Even me?” she said in a whisper. “Even someone who is… illegitimate?”
“Certainly,” he said. “You are the same person that you were six months ago, and all rational people will understand that and judge you as people have always been judged — by their actions, and not by an accident of birth. And if a few people look down on you now, as some look down on me, why then they are not worth knowing and you need not regard them.”
“You do not think it is wrong of me to be… ambitious?”
“I have the utmost admiration for ambition,” he said, with a smile. “In my first marriage, I married the daughter of my employer, and for my second I dared to look at the daughter of a duke, and look how well that has turned out. So why should not you be ambitious, and dare to look at a duke… or a marquess, as he is at present?”
“You know, then?” she said in a low voice.
“I know,” he whispered back, “and I wish you the very best of luck, Lady Olivia.”
“Thank you. I shall need it.”
“Not so much as you might think,” he said, eyes twinkling. “I believe he is ripe for marriage, and you have such charming manners. I think you would make an excellent duchess.”
“His father would not approve of me.”
“Now there you would be wrong. When Embleton offered for Bea, he told us that his father would leave him to make his own choice. The duke sounds like a sensible man, so you need notconcern yourself over that. But… a word of warning, my lady. My wife is every bit as ambitious as you. Having failed to marry a title herself, she was determined that Bea would do so, and Bea got into some difficulties in pursuing that idea. There was talk of putting a man in a compromising situation, and that is a very bad way to win a husband. I trust you would never be seduced into such a thing.”
Olivia blushed at the memory of her failed attempt to kiss Lord Embleton, but she answered composedly, “I know how to behave in a ladylike manner, I hope.”
“Of course,” he said easily, and deftly turned the subject.
Lady Kiltarlity soon rose to leave, her daughters also jumping up with alacrity. Osborn, who had been lurking a little apart from the rest of the company, one shoulder leaning against the wall as he watched Olivia, showed a marked unwillingness to depart.
“Must we go so soon?” Olivia heard him say plaintively to his mother.
But the carriage was summoned and in a very few minutes he was obliged to take his leave, throwing just one long glance across the room at Olivia.
9: The Meet
Olivia could not help but be cheered by Osborn’s obvious pleasure in her company. She had met enough young men to distinguish genuine interest from mere politeness or casual flirtation, and although Osborn had a definite tendency towards flirtation, there was a light in his eyes that she could not mistake. Those eyes! Shelovedthe way he looked at her! No wonder Izzy had been so beguiled by him.
Izzy… And that was the aspect that lowered her spirits again, for what was she to do with a man who was so clearly reprising a former lost love by paying court to her younger sister? For the moment, he was dazzled by the similarity in appearance, but soon enough he would see that she was nothing but an echo of Izzy, a paste copy of her sparkling diamond, a mere shadow of her brilliance. It was disheartening by any measure to be the younger sister of such a creature, but to look so like her and yet to be so unlike at the same time made her excessively despondent.
There was another niggle of concern, too. Why was Osborn even here? She could tell, from the surprised mutterings of the Bucknells, that this visit was out of the ordinary. He had regularly stayed with his friend Marsden for the hunt, she gathered, but he had never made much effort to show himself around the neighbourhood, and now here he was, with his mother and sisters in tow, paying calls. She wished he would go away… and yet, it was such a boost to her spirits to be the recipient of obvious admiration, however unwarranted.
The next morning, finding her father alone in the breakfast parlour, she ventured to say, “Tell me about Lord Kiltarlity and Izzy.”
The earl folded the newspaper he had been reading, and smiled at her. “He was one of her most determined suitors, one of the four. The lovelorn swains, as your mother called them. Farramont, Marsden, Davenport and Osborn. The first to fall for her, but the last of them to talk to me, and expecting me to send him away with a flea in his ear. Five years ago, he had nothing but his own charm and a modest allowance from his father, whereas the others had good incomes, or were heir to it. But your mother liked him… I dare say that charm worked on her, too. Besides, she thought that Izzy favoured him, and she wanted her to be happy. We both did. So I told him we would see that there was enough money, if Izzy chose him.” He chuckled. “Well, there is money enough now, and a title too, so if you are asking whether he is worth encouraging, I would say very much so.”
That was not at all what she was asking, but she could not quite articulate what it was she needed to know. Part of her wanted Osborn gone so that the wretched comparisons with Izzy would stop filling her mind, yet… he was such fun, and delightfully silly, with his‘fair ghost’business, and she did not want to lose that lightheartedness. Since Uncle Arthur’s death, or even before that, with Granny so ill, everything had been darkand gloomy, like midwinter all year round. It was wonderful to leave Corland behind for once, and make new friends and have a man — aneligibleman — paying her attention.
