#Lucius Kennet

[lothiriel84]

Cards on the Table (pt. 2)

A series of post-canon vignettes, each from a different character's point of view. [Part 2/2]

A Faro’s Daughter one-shot collection. Deborah Grantham/Max Ravenscar, with a side of Phoebe Laxton/Adrian Mablethorpe.  

[go back to part 1]

6. Lady Mablethorpe

Augusta Laxton surely was the most insufferable woman on earth, Lady Mablethorpe decided as her son finally bundled his affronted mother-in-law into her carriage. Not that she blamed Phoebe, of course – with a mother like that, anyone would sooner take to their bed than receive any visitors, and there was the poor girl’s condition to be considered. If there was one thing Lady Mablethorpe was not willing to tolerate, it was risking the health of her future grandchild – and prospective heir to Mablethorpe, as she cherished the hope – for the sake of such a selfish creature’s greediness and insensitivity.

“I thought she would never leave,” murmured Arabella at her side, heaving a not-precisely-ladylike sigh of relief. As she couldn’t help but agree on the sentiment, if not her niece’s manners, Lady Mablethorpe simply nodded her assent, and turned her attention to her cup of tea.

“I for one am glad to see Adrian standing up for his wife,” Deborah Ravenscar declared, not unreasonably, and if her ladyship hadn’t heard it with her own ears, she would have called anyone a fool who dared to suggest that her nephew was in fact capable of anything as undignified as a snigger. Marriage was doing Max a world of good, she had to admit, and for all that she still congratulated herself on being spared such a dubious connection, she privately had to acknowledge that, gaming house or not, Lady Bellingham’s niece displayed more respectability and sense than many a duke’s daughter.

“I’m terribly sorry you had to bear witness to such a scene,” Adrian apologised presently, and all but collapsed into the nearest chair. “Lady Laxton is – well, you’ve seen. Truth be told, we’re planning to remove to Mablethorpe as soon as Phoebe is well enough to face the trip.”

“I agree that is probably the wisest course of action,” Max considered thoughtfully, relieving his wife of her empty teacup. The new Mrs Ravenscar offered him a quick, warm smile for his troubles, and let him fuss with her shawl with a look of barely concealed amusement.

“Adrian, dear, do you think Phoebe would be willing to receive me, if only for a few moments? I would very much like to offer her my congratulations in person.”

“Oh, I’m sure she won’t mind seeing you, Deb,” was the prompt reply. “She’s ever so fond of you, and with good reason, as you well know.”

If her ladyship had to suppress a wince at this overly familiar form of address between the pair, she was too well-bred to let it show. And as her nephew appeared more than willing to tolerate such liberties from both parties, it was hardly her place to intervene.

“Give our cousin my love,” Arabella prompted sweetly, even as Max stood offering his arm and escorted his wife out of the room in a most attentive manner. Well, this is beyond everything, she thought to herself, and it took her a full minute to finally register the peculiar way her niece-in-law’s dress – sporting a much more conservative cut than she was normally wont to wear – hugged her figure.

“Max, you impossible creature!” she gasped as her nephew resumed his previous place on the settee. “Are you to tell us we ought to congratulate you as well?”

Had the sudden smile gracing his customarily severe countenance not been indication enough, the air of contrived innocence assumed by her niece would have been her answer. It was plain that Arabella was in on her brother’s secret, just as Adrian had been kept in the dark until that very moment.

“You mean – oh Max, and you never said anything! When are we to expect...?”

“Late summer, we believe.”

As her ladyship’s grandchild wasn’t due until early autumn, she was forced to hold back an irrational twinge of resentment – which promptly turned into a gleam of excitement as the full possibilities started to dawn upon her. So absorbed was she in the contemplation of a much desirable closer alliance between their two families that she all but missed her son’s heartfelt congratulations, and was only brought back to the present day by the sardonic look in her nephew’s eye.

“I fear it is incumbent upon me to warn you, ma’am, that I am determined to see any son or daughter of mine married out of choice rather than duty, or any relation’s wishes.”

“Don’t be absurd, Max,” she chided him, deeply irritated that her secret hopes should be so openly addressed, and just as callously dismissed.

“No child of mine will be induced into matrimony by anything but the deepest of loves,” Adrian declared with an air of affronted dignity, eliciting a startled giggle from his young cousin – who was well enough informed of the circumstances accompanying the sudden transferral of his affections from one lady to another, her aunt reflected gloomily.

Still, Lady Mablethorpe consoled herself reflecting that nothing prevented one of her future grandchildren from falling in love with one among her nephew’s offspring, and she would be there to help things along if she had any say in the matter.

7. Christopher Grantham

“Mr Grantham, what a pleasant surprise! Have you come to visit your sister?”

The gentleman in question shut his eyes briefly, and valiantly set out to ignore the small pang of longing in his chest. Arabella Ravenscar was as lovely a vision as ever in her walking dress and bonnet, and he was faced with the sudden impulse to run up the stairs and gather her in his arms. Only the painful memories of the lady’s inconstancy in her affections stopped him from acting on such an impulse, and he remembered himself in time to bow deeply as she passed him by.

“Indeed I am, Miss Ravenscar,” he replied politely, quickly averting his gaze. “Permit me to wish you a very good day.”

When he was finally admitted to his sister’s presence, Kit Grantham was still so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn’t immediately notice the hustle and bustle of servants, as if they were in the middle of packing their mistress’ belongings for an imminent journey.

“Are you going out of town?” he ventured to enquire at length, and was met with a tinkle of laughter from his dearest sister.

“I’m sure I explained it all to you in my last letter, Kit,” she shook her head, apparently amused. “Max and I agreed that Chamfreys would be a great deal more comfortable for my confinement.”

That finally prompted his gaze to drop to her stomach, and he couldn’t refrain from widening his eyes at the sight he was met with. His sister was – huge, there were no two ways about it, and for the first time in his life he actually stopped to consider such an uncomfortable topic as childbearing, and how it might affect any and all females of his acquaintance.

“And are you – I mean to say, is everything – oh, don’t make me say it, Deb, I beg of you.”

His sister took pity on him, and offered him a sympathetic smile. “We are both as well as can be expected, and I’m positive your nephew or niece is eager to meet you, when the time comes.”

“I’m sure I have no idea how ladies are so willing to put themselves through any of this,” he blurted out, immediately blushing at his own forwardness. “Oh, forget I said anything, I’m all out of sorts this morning.”

Deb considered him for a long moment. “Did you by any chance happen to run into my dear sister as she was preparing to go out for her walk in the park?”

He let out a rueful sigh, twisting his gloves in his hands. “I was so sure of her, Deb, I still cannot conceive how she had it in herself to deceive me so.”

“Oh, Kit, I know for a fact she didn’t mean to, but she’s so very young, and more than a little spoilt besides. I hope with time to have more of a good influence on her, and I’m so very sorry you had to suffer because of this – but let me be blunt and assure you that the two of you would not have suited in the slightest, and it is much wiser to take the time to get better acquainted with your prospective partner for life before setting your heart irrevocably on them.”

Kit Grantham turned a mildly reproachful gaze on his elder sister. “Deb, by your own admission you and Ravenscar had only been acquainted for two weeks before he proposed, and you weren’t even in town for one of those same weeks.”

Deborah laughed. “That’s true, but I would hardly call ours an ordinary courtship, and you said yourself that we must have been both out of our senses to even consider marriage after I had him locked in our cellar.”

“Utterly and completely mad,” he nodded with conviction, though deep down he was quite in awe of how noticeably happy his sister had been since becoming Mrs Ravenscar. Perhaps there was still hope for him after his disappointment, after all.

Once he’d kissed his sister goodbye and presented her with his most sincere wishes for a smooth confinement, he left the house in Grosvenor Square with a spring in his step, and the first glimmer of hope that he might, one day, procure the same kind of happiness for himself.

8. Miss Ravenscar

“Arabella, my dear, how can you forget your manners so?” her mother complained weakly after her as she rushed up the stairs, and all but barged into her brother’s study unannounced.

“Good day to you, Belle,” Max greeted her with intolerable composure, gathering the documents spread in front of him into a neat pile. “I trust you had a pleasant journey?”

“Max, how could you be so unbearably reticent in that note of yours? You must tell me everything, at once!”

“Why, I thought I had been perfectly clear,” he demurred, yet she could clearly see the corners of his lips trembling into the beginnings of a smile. “Both mother and child are perfectly well, and they are currently resting – or at least, they were doing so when I left them, not half an hour ago.”

“Max!” she glared at him in frustration. “Am I the aunt to a little boy, or a girl?”

“Always so impatient,” he shook his head, and stood up. “You are aware, I’m sure, that the proper thing for us to do is to go downstairs, and share the announcement with your affectionate mother.”

“You know very well you don’t care a fig for propriety, and as for Mama, I’m positive she will survive. It’s not as if she’s the child’s grandmother – not really, anyway.”

“And thank heavens for that,” she heard him murmur under his breath, and gave him a hard pinch in retaliation. “Now, if you think you can behave yourself for longer than two minutes at a time, it would be my pleasure to introduce you to the new addition to our family party.”

Mollified by the prospect, she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, and offered him a most demure smile. “I will be on my best behaviour, I promise.”

In short order, she was introduced into her sister-in-law’s bedchamber, greeted her with a kiss on her exceptionally pale cheek, and couldn’t refrain from taking hold of both of her hands and questioning her at length about her ordeal.

“Do not fret yourself so, my dear,” Deborah reassured her warmly, patting her on the arm. “It is not so very bad, and you will see for yourself how the blessing that comes of is well worth the pain.”

Arabella cast an extremely dubious glance at her pallid complexion and the look of utter exhaustion about her countenance. Still, Deborah’s eyes were sparkling with barely restrained joy, and she could hardly miss the brightness of her smile when the nurse strode in with her charge in her arms.

“My dearest sister, I would like you to meet your new nephew, Adrian,” Max announced, with no small amount of pride in his voice. Her breath caught in her throat as she took in the delicate features of the sleeping infant’s face, his miniature hands curled in small fists around a corner of his blanket.

“He’s so tiny,” she breathed out in wonderment, extending a finger to trace the contours of one diminutive fist. “Did you say his name is – Adrian? Does our cousin know?”

“Not at present, though it will be our pleasure to inform him as soon as he visits, like he promised,” her brother smiled, his eyes searching for Deborah’s. “He is after all the reason why we met in the first place, and I cannot think of a better way to honour his – most unwitting – role in bringing us together.”

“Oh, but you must prepare yourselves, Mama will be most disappointed that you didn’t choose our late father’s name for the child,” Arabella said ruefully. “I wish I could talk her out of it, I really do, but you know her, Max.”

“I do,” Max nodded with a great deal of forbearance, and took hold of his infant son with such an air of practiced ease that had his sister most surprised. “Now, we shall go downstairs and introduce the little one to Olivia, thus sparing my darling wife the trial of being faced with my stepmother’s complaints until she’s well on her way to recovery.”

“That’s most considerate of you, dear husband,” Deborah laughed, her gaze lingering on the child with such undisguised tenderness that Arabella found herself wondering what it would be like, one day, to hold her own son or daughter in her arms.

9. Phoebe Mablethorpe (née Laxton)

Young Lady Mablethorpe quietly studied her husband as he leaned over the bassinet with an expression of pure rapture on his handsome face. He looked ever so pleased with their newborn daughter, and yet, she couldn’t seem to put her mother’s rather uncomplimentary speech out of her mind.

“Oh, Adrian,” she whispered timidly, walking up to his side. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do my duty and provide you with an heir. I promise it will be a son next time.”

The sudden, horrified look on her husband’s face gave her pause, and she didn’t even think to resist when he gathered her in his arms quite abruptly.

“Phoebe, how can you speak so! I find I have no words to express how much I love our little Deb, and I wouldn’t want to trade her for anything in the world, do you hear me?”

“I do,” she nodded meekly, hiding her face into his waistcoat. “It’s just, Mama says that – ”

His arms tightened around her, and she felt him press a fierce kiss on top of her head. “Dearest, I hate to speak ill of your mother, you know I do, but the truth is, you ought not listen to a word she says when it comes to such matters.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologised at once, nestling further into his embrace. “And I do love our daughter so, I hate to think she will be looked down by our families until I can bear you a son.”

Adrian chuckled, and placed a gentle finger under her chin. “Well, my mother for one is positively delighted with her granddaughter, if only because she’s already forming some serious designs for her to marry into the Ravenscar fortune. And you know how pleased our cousins are that we named her after Deborah.”

“I will never allow my daughter to be forced into matrimony against her will,” Phoebe declared with unshakable conviction, all but suppressing a shudder at the horrific memories of her parents explaining in no uncertain terms how it was her precise duty to accept, and even encourage, Sir James Filey’s suit. “Oh, Adrian, I don’t know what would have become of me, if you and Deborah hadn’t come to my rescue at Vauxhall Gardens.”

Her husband kissed her very tenderly, his fingers coming to rest at her cheek. “You don’t need to worry about that anymore. And I thank my lucky star that I found the most delightful companion for my life that night.”

Her heart swelling with joy, she found she had no room left to tie herself in knots over the past. And if their daughter chose to break the moment by making her presence known quite forcefully, that was surely her prerogative; as a new mother, she found she could hardly begrudge her child anything, let alone this.

10. Lucius Kennet

Strolling into the house in Berkley Square after an urgent summoning from Lady Bellingham, Mr Kennet was more than a little surprised to be welcomed by her ladyship rather than one of the servants.

“Oh, thank God you’re here, Lucius,” Lady Bellingham proclaimed in a most agitated manner, clutching at her vinaigrette. “My poor nerves are in such a state, I swear I don’t know what to do with myself. Oh, to think that I should live to see the day – but I daresay I won’t, I can feel my spasms coming already.”

“Calm yourself, ma’am,” he urged her, not particularly moved by such a declaration. “And start from the beginning, if you please.”

“Foolish, headstrong girl! She says she shall never see him again, and he’s such a proud creature he will undoubtedly divorce her – we shall all be ruined, and there’s that poor child to be considered, it doesn’t even bear thinking!”

“I’m willing to bet any sum of your choosing that it won’t come to that, ma’am,” he replied with a considerable deal of amusement, earning a reproachful look from the respectable matron.

“I wish you would take this seriously, Lucius. You know very well how Deb is – she refuses to be reasoned with, and now she’s locked herself in one of the rooms upstairs, and she declares she won’t leave even if her husband comes here on his knees all the way from Grosvenor Square and begs for her forgiveness.”

Mr Kennet looked out of the window just in time to spot a carriage bearing the Ravenscar crest stopping in front of the house, and grinned in anticipation of a most diverting scene. “As to that, we shall have to wait and see,” he winked at her ladyship, and went to answer the door himself.

Ravenscar looked momentarily startled at his presence, but was quick to regain his composure, and barely deigned him with a contemptuous glance as he pushed past him and went straight for Lady Bellingham.

“I need to see my wife most urgently, ma’am,” the man gritted out between his teeth, his hat half crushed in his grip. “I beg you to give me leave to seek her out for myself.”

“And what makes you believe she’s here, hmm?” Lucius drawled from the entrance, his arms crossed in open defiance of Ravenscar’s wishes. If he knew his gentleman, he had more than half an idea of where all this was going, and he was determined to have his fun in the meantime.

“I would advise you to stay out of this, Kennet, or I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

“Gentlemen, if you please,” cried out Lady Bellingham, reaching with trembling fingers for her smelling salts. “My niece is indeed upstairs, Sir, and I would lead you to her myself if I thought that would answer. I’m afraid nothing will serve while she’s in one of her tantrums, and I do declare she will be the death of me one day, but what can one do?”

As her ladyship looked perilously close to drop in a dead faint, Mr Kennet stepped forward to help her to the nearest chaise. The two gentlemen exchanged a tense look across the room, until Lucius eventually relented and nodded in the direction of the stairs.

“I’ll take care of the lady, you go upstairs and set our darling Deb to rights,” he smirked, feeling quite sure that, had Ravenscar not had way more pressing matters to attend, he would have happily knocked half the teeth out of his mouth.

It was nigh on half an hour later when Lady Bellingham came back fully to her senses, helped along by a glass of good Burgundy, and promptly resumed her gloomy predictions about the future.

“Think of the scandal, Lucius! I dismissed the servants as soon as I figured what Deb was up to, but I fear by then it was too late. And it can’t be helped anyway, if they’re set to have a breach, which looks more and more inevitable, and – oh, Lucius, they’re fully capable of murdering one another when they’re both in a rage, and where will that leave us?”

“If you have a little more patience, ma’am, you will see for yourself how everything will turn out for the best,” he hastened to reassure her, and indeed, he was soon proven right by the abrupt reappearance of Mr and Mrs Ravenscar, both of them looking oddly flushed, and more than a little sheepish besides.

“Not one word,” Deborah warned him as he took in their rumpled appearances, from his hastily rearranged cravat to the way her curls tumbled freely around her shoulders.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he grinned, and poured himself a glass of wine. “I shall drink to your future happiness, my darling.”

Deborah blushed most endearingly, and turned her attention to the afflicted matron. “Dearest Aunt Lizzie, we’re very sorry for causing you such an unreasonable amount of trouble. With your permission, we shall be on our way presently.”

“Oh, go away, you impossible creature,” her aunt waved her off feebly. “Both of you.”

Ravenscar looked as embarrassed as he ever was, which was in itself most diverting. “My apologies, ma’am,” he bowed, somewhat uncomfortably, and offered his arm to his wife.

“Faith, if young Master Adrian doesn’t get a new playfellow within the next twelvemonth, then I’m not Lucius Kennet,” he laughed under his breath, and tossed off his wine.

[gravitasmalfunction]

'You will not mind a little risk, will you, Lucius?' 'Me sword's at your service, Deb!' 'Oh no! It has nothing to do with swords -- at least I do hope it has not! I just want you to kidnap Ravenscar for me.' He burst out laughing. 'Is that all? Whisht, it's a mere nothing! And what will I be doing with him when I've kidnapped him?' 'I want you to put him in the cellar,' said Miss Grantham remorselessly. 'What cellar?' enquired Kennet. 'This one, of course. It has a very stout lock on the door, and it is not at all damp -- not that that signifies, and in any event he will be tied up.'

Faro's Daughter, Georgette Heyer