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The Noblest Frailty

St. Martin's Press

MISS YOLANDE DRUMMOND was almost two and twenty. She was a remarkably pretty girl, with abundant hair of that rich shade known as chestnut, wide green eyes, and a very fair complexion that, so long as she guarded it from the destructive rays of the sun, seldom threw out a freckle. Her features were dainty, her voice had a husky quality the gentlemen found enchanting, her figure was slender but nicely curved, and she was blessed with a gentle and conformable disposition. She was widely held to be a Fair, and might well have been an accredited Toast save for the fact that before she was out of leading strings it had been decided she should wed her distant cousin, Alain Devenish. Mr. Devenish being possessed of a singularly jealous nature, a fiery temperament, and breath-taking good looks, the gentlemen were given pause by the two former qualities, plunged into despair by the latter, and reluctantly decided that anything more serious than a mild flirtation with the delectable Yolande was a waste of time.

That Miss Drummond had reached so perilous an age without having married surprised a few people who were not well acquainted with her prospective bridegroom. Close friends shrugged off this circumstance, however. Alain Devenish was, they pointed out, a bit of a rascal. Although barely three years Yolande's senior, he had racked up the dubious distinction of having been expelled from Harrow, sent down from Cambridge, asked to resign his regiment and, more recently, been involved in some kind of very unsavoury affair concerning the powerful Monsieur Claude Sanguinet, as a result of which he had barely escaped France with his life. Only the fact that his birth was impeccable, his charm infectious, and his kindness legendary had saved him from social ostracism, but however popular he might be, few blamed Miss Drummond for waiting until her tempestuous beau settled down a trifle.

On a bright morning in early May, Miss Drummond presented a picture to gladden the heart of any man as she stood on the rear terrace of Park Parapine, gazing out over the pleasure gardens and park of her ancestral home. She was clad in a pearl-grey riding habit that fitted her slim shapeliness to perfection. White lace foamed at her throat, and white velvet ribbons were tied in a large bow at the back of her saucy little grey hat. The prospect she viewed was also fair: Beyond the sweep of lawns and flower gardens, the Home Wood presented a verdant border ranging from the tender yellow tints of new leaves to the dark stateliness of evergreens. The air was sweet with the fragrance of blossoms; here and there chestnut trees flaunted their colourful gowns to mingle with the shyer blooms of apple and plums, and lilacs rose richly against a cloudless sky.

Yet, despite all this beauty, Miss Drummond's smooth brow was marred by the suggestion of a pucker, and her lovely eyes were troubled. The sense that she was no longer alone caused her to turn enquiringly, and she discovered that her mother stood watching her.

"Good morning, my love." Lady Louisa smiled, offering a smooth cheek for her daughter's kiss. "Had you a nice ride? A foolish question, no? On such a glorious morning, how could it have been otherwise?"

Yolande loved her mother deeply, but that charming lady's ability to read her thoughts was sometimes alarming, and now she said evasively, "Glorious indeed, especially after so much rain. How pretty you look, Mama. A new dress? That shade of rose so becomes you."

"Besides which, it is a colour you dare not wear," her mother replied, "so I need not fear to discover you have 'borrowed' it."

Yolande laughed. "If I do — very occasionally — borrow your gowns, you have no one to blame but yourself, dearest. What other girl has a mother so youthful and slender she might well be taken for a sister?"

The compliment was well-founded. Lady Louisa had never been a beauty, but had, in her youth, been said to possess "a pleasing countenance," her appeal springing from an innate kindness, rather than from her looks. At five and forty, however, she outshone many a former Toast, for her hair, although an indeterminate shade of brown, had not begun to grey, her skin was clear and unwrinkled, and her merry disposition kept her as young in heart as in appearance. She was also a shrewd woman and, suspecting that she was being guided from an unwanted subject, said mischievously, "Oh, what a rasper! I must beware, for such tactics usually presage an outlandish plea I cannot then resist. What is it, my love? Are you going to tell me you have thrown dear Alain over in favour of some wholly ineligible young man?"

Yolande's smile faltered. She turned back to her contemplation of the horizon and said slowly, "No, Mama. Of course I have not. I know how you and my father have always wished the match."

Lady Louisa's hands clasped rather tightly, and for a moment she was silent. When she spoke, however, it was to ask in a mild way, "Never say you have set the date at last? Devenish must be floating back to Aspenhill!"

"I ... er — Actually ..." Yolande bit her lip. "Oh — we had a small difference of — of opinion."

"I see." Lady Louisa did not see. Were she twenty-five years younger, she thought, and Devenish had smiled her way, Sir Martin might have had a formidable competitor for her hand. As it was, the prospect of having such a son-in-law delighted her, and her husband's heart was quite set on it. He and Colonel Alastair Tyndale had been bosom bows since their schooldays, and it was well known that the Colonel's orphaned nephew, to whom he stood guardian, was his sole heir. Tyndale was not a man of great wealth, but the Park Parapine lands marched with those of his Aspenhill and that the two great estates should be merged by this marriage was the dream of both men.

Doting on her husband, Lady Louisa was in full accord with his wishes in the matter, but she also loved her daughter and therefore said gently, "Dearest, you do wish to marry Alain?"

Yolande's lashes drooped, and the colour in the smooth cheeks was heightened. "I — suppose I do," she answered, concentrating upon drawing the thong of her riding whip through her gloved hand.

"You — suppose? Good God! Do not you know?"

Yolande sighed and asked rather wistfully, "Did you know, Mama?"

"Indeed I did! I had never met your papa, of course, although I had seen him everywhere. I was scarce out of the schoolroom when I was told he had offered and your grandpapa had accepted." She smiled reminiscently, her anxieties forgotten for a moment. "I shall never forget when I was brought into the saloon and Papa took my hand and gave it to Sir Martin. I was so frightened, but his hand was shaking harder than mine, and it gave me the courage to peep at him. And when I saw the smile in his eyes ..." She sighed again, then, meeting her daughter's intent regard, imparted, "My heart was lost in that one moment."

"Oh. And — have you never had — doubts? None at all?"

"Good gracious!" thought my lady, but said serenely, "Never. Oh, there have been times I might cheerfully have boiled him in oil, of course. Men can be so incredibly provoking. But he still has my heart, and I would do anything in my power to keep him happy. You must own he is a splendid gentleman, Yolande. And if you had but seen him when he was a young man ..."

Yolande smiled. The portrait of her father that had been painted upon his attaining his majority still hung in the great hall of the house, so that she had a fairly accurate idea of how he had looked at four and twenty. He was a handsome man then, as now, although nowhere near as good-looking as Alain. It was easy to understand why Mama had fallen so completely in love with him. If only the same feelings were — A soft touch on her wrist roused her from her reverie.

"Dear child," said Lady Louisa in her gentlest voice, "if you do not love Devenish, we will tell Papa. I am sure he would not wish —"

"Oh, no, no! I would not for the world — I do love Dev. He is the very dearest boy. It is only ... that —"

"The years have a way of slipping by rather fast, you know, Yolande. If you love him, I would have thought —" Lady Louisa did not finish that sentence, but added, "He is sans reproche in so far as Family is concerned. And a mote handsome young man one could not wish to meet."

"Very true. But — but he is so wild, Mama! Only think of that fiasco at Cambridge."

"Yes. Though I vow I cannot remember why he was sent down."

"It was for putting glue on the soles of the Proctor's shoes. The poor man took up so much rubble when they went for their morning run, that he tripped and broke his ankle."

"Dreadful!" said my lady, sternly repressing a smile. "But Devenish was honest enough to confess, no?"

"Oh, he is the soul of honour, who could doubt it? But — on the other hand — consider the whole picture, Mama. Expelled from Harrow; sent down from University; asked to resign his regiment — and then there was that frightful business in which he became involved last year with Tristram Leith and the Frenchman. What it was all about I have never been able to discover, save that one has only to mention it and all the gentlemen become like clams, so it must have been very dreadful. One schoolboy prank after another! Do you know, I sometimes fear he will never grow up, for he is just like a naughty little boy!"

"Oh, just. I wonder you could still love the vexing fellow. He must be sternly guided by his lady, no?"

Yolande looked up, met the smile in the kind hazel eyes, and said with a small, wry shrug, "Perhaps. But — my fear is, Mama, that I am, myself, not always very wise."

My lady's heart sank. Still, she persisted gently. "You have numbered his faults, but he has much to recommend him, do you not agree?"

"Yes, of course I do. I could say off a long list of good points. Only, he is so very ... unlover-like." Yolande slanted a shy glance at her mother and, blushing, stammered, "You will — will fancy me very foolish, I fear. But Alain has never once wrote me a love note, or vowed his devotion, or — or behaved like a man deeply attached." Having said which, she cast down her eyes in much confusion and turned her head so that her dark blush might not be seen.

Briefly, Lady Louisa was silent. How irksome, she thought, not to have foreseen such a development. She should have suspected it, Lord knows, for being a loving and concerned parent she was well aware of the many novels her elder daughter carried home from the various lending libraries. Certainly, a girl who shed tears over the pitfalls confronting Mrs. Radclyffe's much-tried heroines, and who had often fallen asleep at night with Lord Byron's poems still held in her hands, would find Devenish's breezy big-brother manner unfulfilling.

She gave her daughter a quick hug. "Of course I do not think it foolish!" she declared staunchly. "I do think it most perverse of Fate to have made Alain so extreme handsome, and have given him so intrepid and dauntless a nature, only to then dump him in this modern age of ours!" Yolande turned curious eyes upon her and, encouraged, she continued, "Your cousin should rather have lived in the days when England was overrun with bold knights. He was meant to ride with lance in hand, and dragons lurking at every bend of his road through life!"

"Alain?" said Yolande, awed. "Heavens! I had never thought of him in such a light."

"Perhaps because you have grown up together. I do assure you, however, that many other young ladies see him in just that light!" And wisely not belabouring the point, my lady went on, "Is it not typical that so dashing a figure should have no slightest vestige of the romantical in his outlook, whereas, beneath the stodgy exterior of some dull, lumpish young man, might burn a soul ablaze with romantic notions?"

Yolande smiled and nodded, and her gaze returned to the view, which she saw not at all. There followed a small, companionable silence, through which Lady Louisa watched her daughter hopefully. Her hopes were dashed.

"If only," Yolande murmured, "he had a steadier, less volatile temperament."

* * *

"Less volatile?" Sir Martin slapped one hand against his muscular thigh and gave a crack of laughter. "When did our flighty miss remark that, ma'am? This morning? She's known the boy all her days and only now is discovering he is no milksop?"

Lady Louisa put down the embroidery she had taken up several times during their conversation, and absently regarded her husband, outlined against the window of her private parlour. A big man who enjoyed the life of country squire and found town a dead bore, Sir Martin carried his years well. His colouring was slightly florid since he tended to burn in sun and wind rather than become tanned, but he was in splendid physical condition, his auburn hair still waving luxuriantly, the grey at the temples lending him dignity. His green eyes were only a little less keen than they had been when he was wed, and his countenance was so well featured that Yolande was flattered when her resemblance to her sire was remarked upon.

Neatly folding her embroidery, my lady asked mildly, "If Yolande was to reject Devenish, my love, should you be horribly disappointed?"

"Not marry him?" He frowned, all the laughter gone from his eyes.

"Oh, dear," murmured his lady.

"Why the deuce should she not marry him?" he demanded, a testy edge to his voice. "They have been promised since she was in the nursery, practically."

"True. But he has not offered. Formally, that is."

"Blast it all, why should he do so bird-witted a thing, when it has been taken for granted these eighteen years and more!"

"Exactly so." She sighed, taking up the embroidery she had reduced to a neat square and shaking it out once more. "Perhaps that is the whole trouble. I should have thought of it."

Sir Martin departed on the first of several tours about the room, during which he animadverted bitterly upon the frivolity, thoughtlessness, and ingratitude of one's children. Never, he declared, would he have so vexed his parents. Especially when they had been nothing but good to him. It was a sorry world when youth today was so insensitive, so selfish. "Devenish," he said, passing his meekly sewing wife on his third lap, "is a splendid young fellow, of impeccable lineage."

"So I told her, Sir Martin."

"He has looks, charm, and a generally sunny disposition. The girls are fairly crazy over him. He owns a magnificent estate in Gloucestershire and will take control of a respectable fortune in a month or so, to say nothing of Aspenhill, for Alastair Tyndale is not like to wed at his age. Does he know about this nonsense, I wonder? Good gad! He would be heart-broken! All our days we've planned that the estates would be joined. What a splendid heritage to be whistled down the wind only because some silly chit decides Devenish is — what was it she said? Volatile? Volatile, indeed! The boy's high-spirited as any colt, is all. He's been in a few scrapes, I grant you, but conducted himself very well in that damned mess in Brittany last year, and by what young Leith says, is pluck to the backbone."

"Yes, dear. But —" She looked up at him and asked gravely, "Could you compel Yolande to marry a man she does not love?"

"Love? Good God, madam! People of our order do not marry for love!"

Her ladyship said simply, "I did."

Sir Martin stared at her, snorted, stamped up and down, put his hands behind him, and stared at her again. Then, with a wry laugh he marched to sit down beside her, removed the embroidery and tossed it ruthlessly over his shoulder, and took his wife in his arms.

After a moment, Lady Louisa pulled back, straightened her demure lace cap, and said a trifle breathlessly, "Now, Martin! Pray be sensible."

"I am being sensible," he argued dropping a kiss on the hand he still held. "You know very well, Louisa, that when you look at me in just that way, it always makes me feel —"

"Then I'll not look at you at all, sir," she said primly, withdrawing her hand, but submitting when it was promptly reclaimed. "Now, I have been thinking ever since I spoke with Yolande this morning, and I have a plan which I hope may work. Yolande must not marry Devenish only to please us, my dear."

He scowled. "Why not? Chances are that once they are wed she will settle down and be perfectly content."

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Excerpted from The Noblest Frailty by Patricia Veryan. Copyright © 1983 Patricia Veryan. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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