Page 39 of A Gentleman’s Offer

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The newly invigorated Mr Nightingale took charge of the situation now, and ushered his unresisting father out of the room, explaining that his lawyer Mr Clarke, and Lord Nightingale’s man Sallow – who clearly had decided which side his bread was buttered and gone over wholly to the opposition – were waiting in another room to supervise the signature of papers that would place all of the Baron’s financial affairs, and those of his family, in the hands of his son. ‘Some of this concerns you, De Lacy, if you’re to marry Meg,’ he told Dominic as they left the room, ‘and I may need a witness or two besides, so if you wouldn’t mind accompanying me…? I’m not quite sure why you switched from Maria to Meg, though I can tell right enough that you’re all dashed happy about it, but I daresay the writer fellow Whatshisname would have understood it better – sort of thing he specialised in, wasn’t it?’

Dominic agreed, his voice quivering only slightly, that it was, and with a swift, intimate smile at his betrothed he followed. The women were left alone together, and a little silence fell after all the uproar, which Maria broke by saying with a touch of defiance mingled with anxiety, ‘Mama, I must tell you that Lady Primrose Beacham is my love, and that we mean to set up house together!’

‘I was beginning to suspect something of the kind,’ said Lady Nightingale drily. ‘I am very happy for you, my dear, and look forward to meeting her directly. I hope you will not insult me by implying that I should be expected to disapprove. I disapprove of nothing in life except meanness: an absence of love and liberty, such as your father exhibits. And Francis is quite right, you know – everything really has worked out with quite remarkable neatness; if I arranged it so at the end of one of my novels, I would surely be accused of the excessive use of coincidence.’

‘Not coincidence, Mama – providence,’ Meg said with a smile. ‘Concordia: the universe operating in harmony for once. And if the solution to our comedy of errors should truly be excessively neat, we should expect now to see Francis happily settled along with the rest of us, perhaps with one of Lady Primrose’s sisters – to avoid introducing entirely new characters who’ve never even been mentioned before at this late stage in proceedings, you know.’

‘That’s a thought,’ Maria said, much struck, taking her jest quite seriously. ‘She does have a great many sisters, mostly unmarried, and Francis seems estimable, perhaps even destined for great things, always supposing he has the right woman to take charge of him. I am sure such a thing could easily be arranged, without the least awkwardness, if between us we put our minds to it.’

‘It might work, you know,’ said Meg, torn between incredulity and amusement. ‘I think he’s rather lonely, and certainly nobody could be kinder and more generous. He’d make a lovely husband for a woman capable of appreciating all his many good qualities. I hope Primrose will choose quite the best of her sisters for him, and perhaps we can throw them together in a natural sort of a way, and see what comes of it. It may quite easily not answer, of course, if they should happen to dislike each other.’

‘Nonsense, why should they? A great number of extremely pink children will come of it, if I am any judge,’ said Lady Nightingale ruthlessly. ‘But I think it’s an excellent idea: well done, everyone. We should certainly dispose of the dear boy sensibly ourselves, if we can, rather than allowing him to blunder about choosing for himself and bringing goodness knows who into the family. How much more smoothly the world would run, to be sure, if women of good will had the organising of it instead of men.’

Meg sometimes found her mother a trifle alarming, and was suddenly and strongly reminded of Maria, when she had blithely informed her that it was a perfectly simple matter for Meg to assume her identity and marry Sir Dominic. Perhaps Maria would grow to be as formidable as Lady Nightingale over time. Perhaps she herself would, come to that. The thought made her smile. She thought that Dominic would be perfectly able to cope with it, and she had already decided that Primrose was equal to anything.

It was agreed among them that Lady Nightingale would not remain in Grosvenor Square, where she could not be comfortable, but would accompany Maria back to the Duke’s house, once she had delivered her precious manuscript to her publisher in Leadenhall Street, putting it directly in Mr Newman’s own hands. Another guest would make no matter in the Fernsby household, she was assured, and everyone was aware that mother and daughter had five long years to catch up on. Meg suppressed a desire to go with them; they must be allowed some time together without her presence, she thought, in order to mend their own relationship quite apart from her. And besides, it seemed most unlikely that Sir Dominic would finish his business with Francis and the legal gentleman and leave the house without seeking her out.

‘I am conscious,’ she mused, ‘of a slight sense of anticlimax. Was my father always to be so easily defeated? He put up no fight at all, but gave in more or less instantly, greatly to my surprise. And yet, though I have spoken boldly of not being afraid of him in the past, in truth I have always been a little in awe of his sheer unreasonableness, and scared what he might do if I defied him over anything serious.’

‘I too, I think,’ agreed Maria readily. ‘I’ve always found it so much easier to evade him than confront him: to smile and agree, while doing more or less exactly what I wanted behind his back. That can only take one so far, as I recently discovered. But it’s this matter of my marriage that brought everything to a head. If he hadn’t decided to try to conceal his fraud by arranging a match for me with a man he thought he could control, it might have been years before I’d have plucked up the courage to try to escape from him. Perhaps I might never have done so. My aunt never has.’

‘Oh, I think you would,’ Lady Nightingale assured her, smiling. ‘You are after all my daughter, and besides you had a strong enough incentive, I should hope.’

‘It was all caused by his fatal flaw, just like a tragic play. Francis would tell us that there’s some dashed Greek word for it,’ Meg said mischievously.

‘Hamartia, dear,’ her mother replied. ‘You should know that, if he does not. And it’s quite true – Augustus brought it all on himself, if can only be made to see as much. But I doubt it – it’s far too late for him to change, in my opinion. What use is it to read the great writers all one’s life, if one does not learn wisdom from them? But what caused him to crumble so completely, I believe, was the sight of us all united against him. Where could he turn? He’s just a foolish blustering bully, when all is said and done, and I wish I had realised as much many years ago, and stood up to him then, and not allowed my children to be so cruelly separated. I remember that dreadful day when we left, and how you both cried so pitifully… But it does no good to speak of such painful matters, I am aware.’

‘It’s all water under the bridge now, Mama. It seems that Meg and I find ourselves exactly where we need to be now, with exactly the right people, and that’s what matters. We may have been separated physically, but you have helped to make sure that we have stayed as close as we could be. And now nothing can keep us apart. Just let anyone try!’

Meg echoed her sister, and now it was her turn to weep joyful tears. ‘Just let anyone try!’