An Early Engagement Read Online Free PDF Page A

chaperones in the park made their debutantes sidestep him like a pile of horse droppings.
    Then he found Ingrid, a handsome widow with a handsome jointure and a small son: a proven breeder! Better yet, he discovered her while on a repairing lease to Cheltenham, where word of his unsavory reputation had not reached. He put on sober clothes and attended her at Sunday church; she put off her widow’s weeds and gaily accompanied Morgan to the theater. Even the lad was cautioned to stop drooling, stop fiddling with his unmentionables, and to leave the contents of the gentleman’s pockets alone. With such fine behavior on all sides, a match was soon made.
    Now, if this marriage were made in heaven the angels had a most quirky sense of humor, for the wedding was one of the few times Ingrid saw her husband that month, much less sober. It was the last time she smiled at him, as soon as she realized that not only would she have to pay for the wedding breakfast herself, but none of Morgan’s noble friends were coming, because he had none.
    Beauregard spilled down his shirt whatever he did not manage to cram in his greedy little mouth, and promptly cast up his accounts on his new papa’s boots. He also “found” a shilling that had somehow slipped from the vicar’s topcoat pocket.
    Beauregard indeed, Morgan told himself too late, a jumped-up name if there ever was one. As soon as the happy new family removed to Arcott Hall, the only honeymoon spot available to Morgan on his finances, Emilyann and the Stockton boys renamed the sausage-shaped, light-fingered, slow-topped little toad Bobo. Only his mother could love him and, as it turned out, he was the only thing she could love besides Mother Church.
    Ingrid was a rampant reformer, an evangelical missionary out to save the world from the evils of gambling, drinking, and wenching—the only particulars Morgan was good at! So she would pray for his soul, that he repudiate the devil before it was too late and he burned in hell forever.
    According to Morgan, hell would have been an improvement to life with Ingrid. As for begetting the heir, she did her wifely duty at first, praying the while. Morgan prayed, too, that he could muster up enough enthusiasm to get the deed done. When no child was forthcoming, Ingrid took it as a sign from on high, a punishment for her sin of ambition, hoping to better herself and her son’s position in life.
    In her weakest moments she dreamed of becoming a society hostess. Heaven forfend! So she redonned her Puritan gowns and scraped her hair back in a bun and refused to attend plays. And she started getting headaches, especially when Morgan came back to their lodgings in London from wherever he spent most of his time, remembering why he married in the first place.
    Gads, he kept asking himself, how could any woman who spouted of hell-fires and soul-scorchings be as cold as her northern forbears? Worse, she was clutch-fisted.
    In all honesty, Ingrid had mentioned that the bulk of her wealth was held for Bobo, with her to administer, but at first—before the wedding—Morgan thought he could charm whatever he needed from her; if that woman had been in Eden, Adam would still be eating gruel in the altogether. So it was back to work, back to gulling greenhead boys into losing their allowances, back to weighted dice and shaved decks. Morgan played; Ingrid prayed.
    Until, that is, one cold, rainy day when the right leader of the Duke of Aylesbury’s coach slipped in the mud and came up lame.
    * * * *
    “What do you mean, he left most of the money in trust for the chit?”
    “What do you mean, he named Uncle Morgan as one of my trustees?”
    Both together: “Damn and blast!”
    Mr. Baxley, the late duke’s man of business, wiped his forehead. Where to start? He turned first to the ashen child lost in a tentlike black gown. He had known her all her life; he moved the ink bottles farther out of her reach.
    “My dear,” he said gently. “You must know that