Married to the Rogue (Season of Scandal #3) - Mary Lancaster Page 0,7
here. But I suppose you do not wish to know all that.”
He blinked. “I did ask.” He sat back while Mrs. Briggs set down the coffee pot and cups, cream, and sugar.
“Thank you,” Deborah murmured.
Mr. Halland’s steady gaze disconcerted her. Determined to get the encounter over with as quickly as possible, she reached for the pot and poured out two cups. He took one.
“And what reckless act have you committed recently?” he asked her.
She blinked. “None. Unless you count traveling on the mail coach from London to Chester.”
“We were discussing doing foolish things without intent,” he reminded her. “Like mine of yesterday.”
She thought about it. “I don’t usually act out of temper.”
His smile was twisted. “Then what?”
She shrugged. “Thoughtlessness. Or too much thought and reaching the wrong conclusion.”
“You admit to thought? Be careful, or you will confess next to reading a book – other than a fashionable novel – and then you will be ruined.”
“I don’t believe such activities can ruin a governess,” she said, although she reflected with some despair that her actual ruin, if ruin it proved to be, would indeed stand in the way of her obtaining any respectable position. Perhaps everything really did have to come down to Lucy’s marriage, and if that did not happen…
She became aware of the silence, and then, alarmingly, of his unblinking observation. Had she spoken aloud? Had he somehow read the ruin in her face?
He raised his cup to his lips and drank. “Let me tell you my story,” he said unexpectedly, replacing the cup on its saucer. “I am a Member of Parliament, elected to the House of Commons nearly two years ago. I am independent, fortunate enough to have an income on which to live modestly. But I also have an estate and a much larger fortune through my mother, which I will inherit on my thirtieth birthday, or when I marry. My grandfather, who controls this property in trust for me, refuses to break the trust and give it to me even two years early.”
This, she already knew from Sir Edmund, so she merely nodded politely.
His lips quirked. “Don’t you wish to know why I want the property now?”
“I imagine it is more comfortable in London with a large fortune.”
“I already have enough to live comfortably in London,” he reminded her. He almost seemed disappointed in her.
“Then why do you need more?” she asked obligingly.
He said, “I want Gosmere Hall to entertain and persuade important people of my points of view.”
She blinked. “Are there not less expensive ways? At least for two years?”
“Yes, but that is wasted time. I want to prove the benefit to the economy of land improvements and decent wages for labor. But most of all, I want to endow a school on the grounds. There is a suitable building there already, although it is in need of repair and refurbishment. And teachers and staff.”
Her eyes widened at the unexpectedness. She sipped her coffee, “I imagine that would be expensive,” she allowed. “But would you not be able to recoup from the pupils’ fees?”
“The pupils I have in mind won’t be able to pay fees.”
She set down her cup. “It is to be a charity school?”
“With a greater purpose.” He leaned forward. “In all our growing cities—and in the country, too,—are poor children, children forced into work to earn for their families. They grow up with no education, no possibility of any other life. They have no choice. What if they were given a choice? To learn, to go on to university, become doctors, lawyers, bankers, anything they wished to be? Imagine a whole country full of educated children.”
“You cannot educate the whole country,” she said practically.
“No. But I can educate a few in a model school.”
She smiled. “That you can then show to your important and influential guests?”
He grinned, almost like a schoolboy himself, then added hastily. “I would not like you to think I came up with this notion by myself, that I am advocating it through mere idealism and little knowledge. In fact, it is the brainchild of my friend who has taught at several schools from Eton to a charity school in Manchester. Many people don’t even believe that the poorer classes can be educated or that it is wise to educate them beyond their station. But it is clear that—”
He broke off apologetically. “Well, I won’t bore you with all that right now. Suffice it to say, my ambition stretches beyond just throwing a little charity at a church