A Brilliant Mismatch, page 1
A Brilliant Mismatch
Elizabeth Mansfield
Garden House Books
Moira’s father, Viscount Pattinger, bought off another suitor for the very last time. Now that all of her three younger sisters were either married, or about to be, Moira was determined to wed the next man she saw, whoever he might be . . .
An exciting Regency Romance, by award-winning author Elizabeth Mansfield, back in print!
Garden House Books / published by arrangement with the author’s estate
Copyright © 1991 by Paula Schwartz.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Garden House Books, P. O. Box 1824, Rahway, NJ 07065
ISBN: 978-1-954434-03-5
PROLOGUE
Moira Pattinger had bright red hair and a temper to match. Since everyone in the large household adored her, that fiery temper was called “spirit,” but it was temper all the same. Even her father, the crusty Lord Pattinger, who had nasty things to say about almost everyone, called it spirit. (He’d once actually been heard to admit that he rather liked the spirit of his eldest girl, excusing this unusual lapse into praise by explaining that she’d inherited both her hair color and her temper from her bewitching Irish mother, who had died twenty years earlier, in 1796.) But Moira herself did not like that side of her character, she was convinced that it signified a reprehensible lack of self-control. That was why, in ordinary circumstances, she tried to keep her hotheadedness tightly reined. Tonight, however, the circumstances were not ordinary. If the gossip she’d just heard from her abigail turned out to be true, she intended to unleash that temper in all its explosive force.
“Not again!” she swore under her breath as she stormed down the hall to her youngest sister’s room. “Confound it all, I’ll not let them do this to me again.”
Her sister Barbara’s bedroom was located at the end of a long corridor, the entire length of which Moira traversed—red curls bouncing and skirts swishing—in tight-lipped fury. She threw open the door without knocking. “Damnation, Babs,” she snapped, getting to the point without roundaboutation, “have you really had the temerity—the contemptible cheek—to accept an offer from my Godfrey!”
Barbara Pattinger, younger than Moira by six years (and much more prone to tears than temper), had been huddled on the window seat biting her nails in nervous anticipation of this confrontation. At the sight of her sister, standing tall and furiously proud in the doorway, she shuddered in alarm. “Oh, dear! Has Father t-told you already?”
“No, not Father. Greta told me. So it’s true, then?”
Barbara’s eyes fell in admission of the truth, and her ready tears began to flow. “You h-hate me now, I suppose. You m-must! I suppose the whole household will b-be saying all sorts of v-vile things about me by tomorrow.”
“What did you expect?” Moira strode into the room and slammed the door behind her. “When you steal your own sister’s betrothed from right under her nose, no one is likely to find you admirable.”
The younger girl cringed at the venom in her sister’s voice. “I didn’t s-steal him. At least, n-not exactly . . .”
“Don’t quibble! I assume that Father—as usual—bribed him to offer for you instead of me, but you could have refused him, couldn’t you?”
“N-no, I couldn’t,” Barbara replied, weeping in earnest now. “I l-love him!”
The declaration shocked Moira into silence. She hadn’t realized that love was playing a part in this conspiracy. The two sisters stared at each other, neither knowing what to say to the other. They were not close, for six years and two other sisters stood between them. Not that Barbara didn’t adore her eldest sister. Moira had always been her idol. She was awed by Moira. She both envied and admired Moira’s sharp wit and spectacular Irish beauty—the bright red-gold ringlets that curled round her face with lively vibrancy, the green eyes that could sparkle with humor as quickly as with anger, the strong, dimpled chin, the graceful neck, the shapely bosom, and the long, long legs. What man could resist a woman with such spirit and such beauty? And yet here Moira was, a virtual spinster at twenty-six. Father had “bought off” her suitors three times now. Barbara had to admit to herself that it wasn’t fair.
Moira studied her younger sister with equal intensity. Was the silly chit truly in love with her Godfrey? Moira shook her head in disbelief. If truth be told, she herself had been finding Sir Godfrey Jayne a bit of a bore. He looked a veritable Adonis, but his conversation left much to be desired. He was always prosing on about his hunting prowess. Ever since he’d made his intentions plain, and Moira had decided to accept him, she’d been wondering how she would endure spending the rest of her life listening to his fox-hunting tales. Riding to hounds was his life’s purpose, an activity to which he attached not only a sporting value but a moral one. “Fox hunting,” he was wont to declare at the slightest opportunity, “is not only a manly amusement, but it builds the character and fosters and preserves the aristocratic spirit.” Moira had been finding herself less and less in sympathy with him. If it weren’t for the fact that Father had turned off her earlier suitors so often that she was becoming desperate, she would say that Babs was welcome to him. Babs, so gentle and pretty, with her soft auburn hair and kind eyes—could she really care for such a bore? “What makes you think you love him?” Moira asked carefully, breaking the silence.
Barbara brushed at her cheeks. “I know I love him. I dream of him all the time.” She lifted her eyes to Moira’s, her face taking on a glow. “He’s so manly and handsome, isn’t he? I love the way he moves . . . the way he sits a horse . . . the way he smiles. And he speaks so well, don’t you agree? All those tales about fox hunting and his shooting expeditions . . . I could listen to him all day!”
Moira, her anger toward her sister melting away, ran her fingers through her red curls. She was suddenly feeling more troubled than enraged. “But Babs, my dear, doesn’t it bother you that Godfrey came here courting me? You must realize that he offered for you only because Father bribed him with an enormous dowry—just as he did Jeffrey and Horatio—and not because he cares for you. Have you no pride?”
Barbara lowered her eyes. The dark lashes that brushed her cheeks still glistened with tears. “I can’t h-help it, Moira. If you really c-cared for him, I would have r-refused him, but I know you don’t. I’ve seen your face when you’re in his company. He bores you to distraction.”
“Yes, I admit it. But—”
“But he doesn’t bore me, don’t you see? I can make him happy. Because I’m the one who really loves him, I can . . . I think I can . . . make him forget you.” She looked up at her sister with pleading earnestness. “Don’t you think I can . . . someday?”
Moira expelled a deep breath of surrender. “Of course you can. He can’t have cared for me so very much if he so promptly accepted Father’s offer. Very well, take him. If you’re sure he’s what you want.”
Barbara leaped up from the window seat and ran across the room to her sister. “Then you forgive me?” she asked, throwing her arms around Moira’s neck. “You’re not angry with me anymore? Please say you’re not angry with me!”
Moira brushed the tears from her sister’s soft cheek. “No, I’m not angry with you, Babs. This is not really your fault.”
The two sisters embraced, Barbara weeping in relief. “Do you really mean it, Moira, love? You don’t blame me?”
“No, not anymore, now that I understand your feelings.” But there was someone to blame for this, Moira knew: the calculating Viscount Pattinger, her own dear father! Her face hardened. She released herself from her sister’s hold, turned on her heel, and strode back to the door. “It’s Father I’m furious with, not you.”
Barbara followed her. “I don’t blame you for being furious, Moira. Father has been grossly unfair to you, everyone knows that. But—” She bit her lip worriedly and put a gentle hand on her sister’s arm. “Wh-what are you going to do?”
Moira looked at her sister over her shoulder, her eyes glittering dangerously. “Have it out with him, once and for all,” she said between clenched teeth. “He’s done this to me once too often.”
Barbara winced. “Don’t quarrel with him again, Moira. It’s so awful when you do. If you don’t want Godfrey back, what reason is there for setting Father in a passion?”
Moira shook off her sister’s hold. “There is every reason, as you know perfectly well. When Father bribed Jeffrey to offer for Susan, I was too shocked to think clearly, so I did nothing. I really cared for the fellow, you know . . . or believed I did, until the bounder showed his true mettle by choosing to give me up for the proverbial mess of pottage. And then Father gave Horatio to Alberta on a silver platter! You know what a to-do I raised on that occasion. But this time . . . well, it’s quite the outside of enough! I want to make sure he never, never does this to me again!”
“But Father is so . . . so stubborn, you know. How will you—”
Moira’s green eyes flashed. “I shall threaten him with something dreadful.”
“Oh, dear! Threaten him?” Barbara eyed her sister in real alarm. “What will you—?”
“I don’t know,” Moira snapped as she threw open the door and stormed off down the hall. “But you may be sure I’ll think of something!”
CHAPTER ONE
There was something much too cheerful in Oliver’s demeanor as he went about the business of packing to leave home.
“Situation?” Oliver looked up at his brother with a grin that was both warm and teasing. “There is no ‘situation’ that I know of.”
“When a fellow decides to leave his home for no reason and go off to an unknown destination for an unspecified length of time, it sounds like a ‘situation’ to me!” the Earl retorted.
Oliver did not answer. He merely continued to whistle and to pack. John watched dolefully as his brother—younger than he by more than a decade and consequently not as close as John would have liked—sorted through the pile of “necessaries” that were spread over his bedstead preparatory to cramming them into a rucksack that anyone could see would be much too small. “Why don’t you take a proper portmanteau?” the Earl asked in sour disapproval.
The Honorable Oliver Sherrard, who had been studying the array of linens, wondering which of the dozens of neckerchiefs, shirts, singlets, smalls, and stockings would be absolutely necessary to his survival, looked up and smiled again at his dour-faced brother. “I say, John, don’t stand there in the doorway like a frightened footman. Do come in.” He turned back to the confusion on the bed and shook his head. “I don’t want to take more than can be carried in this one rucksack,” he explained.
His brother sighed helplessly as he crossed the threshold and sat down gingerly on the room’s one easy chair, asking himself why he and Oliver never managed to see eye to eye on anything. There was nothing—not politics, economics, or even the proper attire for riding—on which they agreed. Not only were they utterly different in physical appearance, but they had diametrically opposed views on life, love, and the importance of wealth and titles. John was a traditionalist in these matters, firmly committed to the preservation of the monarchy, the social structure, and the family silver. He looked every inch an earl, being impressively tall, with lank, sandy hair, pale blue eyes, deeply creased cheeks, and a long chin that emphasized his perpetually worried expression. Even his bearing was both formal and fastidious, perfectly befitting the lordly dignities that had just come down to him.
Oliver, on the other hand, had nothing lordly about him. He was only of average height, with the sturdy frame, broad shoulders, and muscular arms of a farmhand. Even his features were not lordly; his brown eyes were too gentle for an aristocrat, his cheeks too wide, his complexion too ruddy, and his lips—always on the verge of smiling—too full for elegance, while his dark hair was so thick and rebelliously straight that his valet used to despair of ever taming it to stay for more than ten minutes in the style in which it was combed.
The personalities of the two brothers were as different as their appearances: John was conventional, scrupulous, and serious, while Oliver—yearning for freedom and adventure, scoffing at the rites and ceremonies of noble society, and chafing at the constraints that his station in life had placed on his dress and demeanor—was nonconforming, casual, and whimsical. His nonconformity had been kept in check while his father, the previous Earl, had lived, but now that the old patriarch had passed on to his reward, Oliver felt free at last to cast off the shackles of propriety and strike out on his own.
John, however, was far from happy that his brother was leaving. He loved the boy dearly and wanted him always nearby. Oliver’s remarkably good nature had made him much beloved in the household, and the news of his imminent departure depressed not only the Earl but his wife, his little son, and the whole household staff, from the butler down to the lowliest scullery maid in the kitchen. John had argued and pleaded with the fellow, but nothing he’d said succeeded in dissuading Oliver from his determination to leave.
Oliver had set his mind on taking a year’s walking tour of England. He was about to become his own man at last, he’d declared, and the prospect of this forthcoming freedom was a heady delight. He was, in his own words, “prime for a lark.” And he would give no guarantee that he would return home at the end of the trip. “This is your home, John,” he’d insisted, “and it suits you well. But it’s not suited to me.”
“What is suited to you, then?” John had demanded angrily.
Oliver had shrugged good-naturedly. “I don’t know. At twenty-three years of age I suppose I should know what I want of life, but I don’t have an inkling. Perhaps my travels will help me learn.”
John was troubled by Oliver's devil-may-care philosophy, blaming the boy’s indifference to wealth and social position on the fact that he was a second son. All second sons of propertied gentlemen grew up with the knowledge that in all probability they would never inherit their fathers’ wealth or titles, and John couldn’t help wondering if Oliver’s casual dismissal of the values of his class was his defense against his disappointment at his blighted expectations. But John had to admit that he’d never discovered anything in Oliver’s attitude to indicate that the boy felt the slightest disappointment in what fate had dealt him. The young man had always been amazingly indifferent to his situation. Didn’t he care at all about his lack of prospects? What, John wondered, is to become of the boy?
Oliver, however, had no such concerns. He was, apparently, feeling nothing but happy anticipation at the prospect of leaving home. No sentimental regrets clouded his eyes; no mournful thoughts seemed to interfere with the sense of excited anticipation that animated his every movement. The Earl sighed again as he watched his brother stuff a starched shirt carelessly into the rucksack. “Why don’t you let your man do that?” he asked.
Oliver did not look up. “I let my man go,” he remarked casually.
John’s eyebrows rose in shocked disapproval. “Good God, why? How can you possibly exist without a valet?”
Oliver couldn’t help laughing. “I think I’ll manage to exist. This may come as a shock to you, old man, but I’ve finally caught on to the technique of buttoning a button. I can do up my shirts all by myself these days.”
John stiffened in offense. “Don’t be a jackanapes. One can’t call oneself a gentleman without a valet.”
“Come now, John, must you be so bumptiously toplofty? I’m going on a simple walking tour, not a grand tour of Europe. Why on earth would I have need for a valet?”
John did not believe him. In his eyes, going off on a trip without one’s valet was as unthinkable as going out in public without one’s breeches. He felt a sudden spasm of guilt. The truth was plain: Oliver had let his valet go because he feared he could no longer afford him. John clenched his long fingers in dismay. He’d always known he would be the Earl of Lydbury one day, but he’d never been comfortable with the knowledge that his own good fortune would come at the expense of his brother. Now that his father was dead and the inheritance was his, John found himself positively embarrassed at being the cause of his brother’s impoverishment. “Damnation, Oliver, it’s not my fault,” he muttered, rising from the chair awkwardly and turning away to stare out of the window.
Oliver frowned at his brother in puzzlement. “Fault? What are you talking about, John?”
“I’m talking about the deuced title.” He lowered his head so that his forehead rested on the windowpane. “I didn’t ask for it, you know. It’s not my fault that I was born first.”
Oliver blinked at his elder brother in surprise. He’d always felt, even in boyhood, that his brother would make a perfect Earl of Lydbury, whereas he himself was in every way unsuited to the role of peer of the realm. “Good God, John,” he exclaimed, a look of amusement combining with the astonishment in his eyes, “are you imagining that I resent you?”
John’s feeling of guilt deepened. “Is it only imagination?” he asked, turning and searching his brother’s face for a sign of jealousy. “If I were in your shoes, I’d be positively sick with resentment.”
“Balderdash! You’d be as glad for me as I am for you. Come now, old man, how can you believe that I would suddenly resent you? I’ve never had any expectations, so why should I suddenly feel that they’ve been dashed? I’ve grown up with the knowledge that I’m a second son. Why would you think I care now, when I’ve never cared a jot in all these years?”
