For All Those Whom We Love and Value - Chapter Three

Prologue

Chapter One

Read the previous chapter here...

Phoebe paced in the small sitting room she shared with the spinster who let the room on the other side, having been driven from the confines of her own room by sheer nerves.

It had been two days since she sent her second note to Barrington House, and five days since the first, delivered immediately after she took rooms in the boarding house. Neither had recieved a response, and Phoebe was beginning to worry. Sophia and the Admiral had leased a house in Somerset, and taken Sarah with them, though not before reaffirming their offer to visit.

If Anthony kept her waiting much longer, Phoebe might have to take them up on the offer, before her funds ran dry.

Phoebe had ordered a small jug of milk sent up from the kitchen with her lunch tray, and set to making herself some proper Indian tea, the spices brewed whole in the milk with the tea leaves in a small wire-mesh container, over the sitting room fire. She was just patting the spices dry to use again later when a maid poked her head in, looking overwhelmed. "Begging your pardon, Miss, but you have a caller. Proper fine one, too, if you don't mind me saying."

Anthony! It had to be!

Phoebe patted her hair and smoothed her skirts. "Show them up, please. Oh, and bring up a tea tray, with scones and jam. Just cups, though, I have a teapot here already."

The maid nodded and vanished, and Phoebe hurried to fetch her own teapot, a parting gift from her mother's family, and poured the tea into it. Anthony would welcome the familiar taste, she was sure.

It was not Anthony.

Instead, it was an older woman, dressed in fine clothing and far more jewels than Phoebe expected to see this close to the docks. There was a great deal of Anthony in her features, however, and Phoebe hazarded a guess that she was his mother. Alarm bells started to ring in her head, but she kept herself calm as she curtsied and offered the best seat. "Tea, Dowager Countess? I'm afraid I brewed it to your son's liking, rather than your own."

Phoebe had never met the Dowager Countess, much less learned how she took her tea, but manners were manners. The older woman's eyes widened at the taste of spices, a minor luxury even among the upper class, and the prepared criticism died on her lips. "Well, I suppose serving in far off lands does lead to some acquired tastes."

Behind her, the spinster's door opened briefly, and Phoebe caught a glimpse of wide eyes before it quickly shut again. She tried not to react. "I confess, you were not the Barrington I expected to see."

The Dowager Countess set down her cup, selecting a dainty Queen Cake from the tray. "You can be under no illusion why I have come on my son's behalf, of course. You see, he cannot marry you."

Phoebe had expected some polite blandishments and an attempt to talk her into breaking the engagement - Anthony had drafted the contract before he left India specifically so his family couldn't strong-arm him into an arranged match - but not such blatant falsehoods. "But-"

The Dowager continued as if Phoebe had not spoken. "He is the earl; his standing will be harmed if he marries a foreign soldier's daugher, instead of a member of the peerage."

Phoebe's father was hardly foreign, and her grandfather was as much a titled member of the gentry as any English Baronet! "My mother is a Mahakumari-"

Again, Lady Berrington spoke over her, and Phoebe bit back a sharp remark at the incivility. "It is bad enough that he knows nothing of being an Earl, how can he marry someone who has not been brought up to become a countess?"

And whose fault was that lack of education on Anthony's part? Certainly not his! By any measure one cared to use, Anthony was an improvement on his older brothers, the Heir and Spare to the title, and if he knew little of politics and running an estate, he would not remain ignorant for long. Phoebe sipped her own tea, summoning every bit of the passive-aggressive feigned obliviousness her mother brought out when she was introduced to the wives of Senior Officers. "If his Lordship wishes to break our engagement, he may tell me so himself."

Lady Berrington appeared shocked, as if the idea that Phoebe might refuse her had never crossed her mind. Foolish of her; no-one who had made such a long and costly journey would simply turn around and go home again. Unfortunately, the older woman rallied quickly. "The Earl has more important thing to do than needlessly raise your expectations by calling on you, especially here!"

Phoebe kept the same measured tone, as if Lady Berrington's opinions were entirely irrelevent. Which, really, they were. "I wonder, then, that your Ladyship bothered to come yourself."

The Dowager hid it well, but there were definite hints of a thwarted scowl edging around her lips, not quite hidden by sinking her teeth rather viciously into a scone. "Someone had to, and a dowager can do as she pleases."

No doubt the old lady thought so. "Yes, I imagine that she can."

Did that mean that the Dowager Countess was here without Anthony's knowledge, or that he wanted plausible deniability in what would be considered a matter of honour? No-one would deny the proof of a written contract, and it would not look good for the new Earl to be sued for breach of promise. Potentially ruinous, even, if he gained a reputation as someone who didn't keep promises, and something that would make it that much harder for him to find a good match among the Ton.

Phoebe was inclined to suspect the former, however Lady Berrington had hidden the matter from her son, but family and duty had meant everything to Captain Anthony Lockwood, and likely even more to the Earl of Berrington, currently the last of his line. With only sisters left, and a Childless uncle who had never married and showed no indication of changing that status, it was even more important that Anthony marry and get on with the business of siring heirs.

Phoebe did not doubt Anthony's love for her, but his devotion to duty had been one of the things that first attracted her to the then-Captain, and duty and desire did not always co-exist peacefully.

Misgivings gnawed at her, such that she barely noticed the Dowager Countess's smug smirk, nor her departure without even the basic civilities of farewell. Not doubt; Anthony's constancy to her was the one thing she remained sure of, but worry. If she insisted on continuing the engagement, how would it affect Anthony and his family? Would he come to resent her if her presence caused the Lockwoods of Berrington to be looked down upon?

Too many questions, and not nearly enough information to begin answering them.

Phoebe was enough of a soldier's daughter to know that to move without planning was to invite disaster, and enough of a Mahakumari's daughter to be wary of potential interference. As much as Phoebe disliked the viper's nest of political jostling for social status, it had been a cornerstone of her upbringing in a multicultural family, and whatever the Dowager Countess believed, Phoebe was far from unprepared to face the Ton.

To clear her head, Phoebe prepared another cup of tea. Really, how did the English stomach the bland tea-flavoured hot water served here? Of course, in England, spices were worth their weight in gold, and one did as one must. Hm, the fresh ginger would not be good for many days more, but there was a young couple two rooms over who would appreciate it, even if it had a tea-flavoured aftertaste, what with the wife being in the family way.

Phoebe settled into the comfortable armchair, savouring the familiar spices as she tried to think.

First, she needed a place to stay. The boarding house was all very well, but her funds would not last forever, and she had few friends in England, if Anthony turned out not to be relied upon. The Crofts were moving forward with their plans to lease a house in Somerset, and Mrs Croft had issued a standing invitation...

Next, some way to communicate with Anthony, that could not be intercepted. Phoebe would have to assume that the household staff, loyal to the Dowager who had been their Mistress for years, were under orders to report any unfamiliar correspondence to her, before it reached Anthony. Perhaps not all of them were so eager to please, or perhaps the Dowager had some other method, but it was safer to assume interference and plan accordingly, than the reverse.

Anthony's batman! Biracial like Phoebe, he had mustered out, willing to follow Anthony wherever fate led them, and been hired as Valet not more than an hour later. There were not so many men with Indian accents in London that Hari would fail to stand out, and even fewer places that Hari would take himself in his free time. Phoebe would begin asking around those places in the morning, and hope that a message might be conveyed to her betrothed in that manner.

Phoebe was the daughter of a Colonel, and the grandchild of a Maharaja. Until all possible options were exhausted, or until Anthony explained to her face that he wished to be free of her, she would not admit defeat.

Uppercross Cottage, Somerset...

She had done it.

Not willingly - the Anne of a year, or even a few months, ago would have been astonished at the lengths and near-incivilities she had resorted to in order to avoid coming face-to-face with Captain Wentworth! - but she had seen him, and exchanged some brief words, and the world had not ended.

Well, the world around her had not ended, though a part of Anne that she refused to acknowledge might have wished otherwise. The pain and heartbreak of giving Wentworth up, those eight years ago, Anne had learned to live with. The pain of being near him and knowing that he wanted nothing to do with her... eventually, she would learn to bear that, too.

Natasja Rose is the author of two Austen Variations and twenty-nine non-Austen books of various genres, two of which are being adapted as scripts for a mini-series.

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