“Since I would not wish to deprive you, you may give me a page that you have already read.”
“Here you are, ma’am.” As she twitched the pages from his outstretched hand, he noticed angry scratches on the back of her left hand. And there was that scruffed-up chin of hers and the long scratches on her cheek. He wondered what other damage there was beneath her clothes. And there was a thought. He could easily imagine that her breasts were really quite lovely, and a handful. His hand cupped around his coffee cup inadvertently. As for the rest of her, he swallowed his coffee and choked. She just stared at him with vague disinterest until he stopped coughing.
“If you had turned blue in the face, I promise I would have done something,” she said, her voice as bland as the yellow draperies on the windows.
“Thank you. I am fine now. I was just thinking rather disconcerting thoughts. I hope you are feeling better this morning? Here, have some more eggs. You need to gain flesh.”
“My papa always said that a woman should never gain flesh. He said it was displeasing.”
“Displeasing to whom?”
“Why, to gentlemen, I would think.”
“And should gentlemen gain flesh?”
“I believe,” she said very clearly, “that gentlemen can do whatever pleases them without fear of much or any retribution. What lady, after all, is going to tell her husband that she dislikes his heavy jowls or his paunch when he is the one who doles out the money?”
“That is an excellent point. However, I will allow it. You may eat. Then, if you’ve eaten enough in my estimation, I will give you your allowance.” She gave it up, tossed up her newspaper and let it fall to the carpet.
“Yes, I’m relieved you appear quite recovered this morning, but not surprised. Dr. Branyon assured me last evening that you would be restored to your usual self today. Since that made all present roll their eyes, I imagined that your usual self is something of a treat for everyone.”
“I’m not a treat—no, no, you meant that as a trial and I’m not a trial to anyone. Well, maybe to you, but surely that’s understandable. I don’t like you. I wish you weren’t here. Rather, I know you have to be here since you’re the new earl, but I don’t have to like it. Damn you.” Her fork trembled in her hand, but she quickly raised it to her mouth.
“You said a lot there. Much of which I would say myself about you, but I am a gentleman. I am polite. I am the host. I must be polite. Would you care to ride with me, ma’am? After you’ve finished your breakfast, of course. I am nearly done myself. I would appreciate a tour of the property. If you can bring yourself to do it.” She wanted to refuse him. She wanted him to ride out and get lost and maybe have his horse toss him into the fishpond, but it didn’t make any sense since the fishpond was only a couple of feet deep. “I will take you about,” she said. “I am not illogical.” He raised a black eyebrow to that, in just the same fashion that she did, as her father had done. Her father. She felt her throat close. Damnable pain. She welcomed it but she hated it, too, because it stripped her and laid her raw.
He saw it, knew she would hate it if she knew he’d seen it, and said,
“Excellent. Which horse do you ride, ma’am? I shall send word to the stables.”
“The earl’s horse,” she said without thought, still sunk in misery.
He didn’t like her sunk like this, thus he said, “Oh? Do you not think it will be a trifle uncomfortable riding pillion? Not, of course, that I would necessarily mind sharing my horse with you, at least until you’ve gained more flesh. Then perhaps the poor beast would not be too pleased carting about the both of us.”
That did the trick. She looked at him as if she would like to wrap the tablecloth about his head and smother him. He grinned at her.
“You did that on purpose. You know I did not mean your bloody horse. I meant the earl’s, that is, my father’s—”
“You mean Lucifer.”
“You knew that I did all along.”
“You have my permission to ride Lucifer.”
“I shoot very well,” she said, shoving back her chair in a motion reminiscent of her display in the library the afternoon before.
“I would appreciate it, ma’am, if you would contrive to take better care of my furniture.”
She couldn’t find words to demolish him. It was because she was tired. It was because she’d so recently felt flattened. She could only stare at him, hoping he could see the killer light in her eyes.
He rose and came to her. “Come, my dear ma’am. Don’t you think we’ve flayed each other sufficiently this morning? I, for one, would not particularly care to have my breakfast disagree with me.” At her continued silence—actually, she was grinding her teeth—he added with a smile, “I will make Lucifer a gift to you. Soon we shall rename him the countess’s horse.”
“Ah, that is bald speaking.”
“Naturally, I’m a bald man.” She snorted, he was sure he heard it. The preamble to a laugh. Her grief for her father would lessen, slowly, but it would lessen, and he could help her if she would allow it. Odd that he did not believe her a shrew, a harridan, and a termagant all rolled into one this morning. He thought he had died and gone to Hell after meeting her the previous day. She had rubbed him rawer than a pair of new boots.
He hadn’t believed it possible that a man could exist with such a woman.
Today, though, was different. Today he nearly made her laugh. Today he had seen the quickness of her mind. He had actually heard her utter witticisms. He drew out his watch and consulted it. “Coming, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, eyeing that cleft in his chin. “I am coming.” Dr. Branyon didn’t move a muscle when Lady Ann lifted her skirts to step over a tiny blossoming rosebush. Beautiful ankles, but then again he believed every inch of her was beautiful. She wasn’t wearing a bonnet and her thick blond hair shone like minted gold beneath the bright midday sun. She held a handful of cut roses in her right hand. It seemed to him that her face glowed with a new health and vitality. He wasn’t prejudiced about this, he knew it.
As Lady Ann was carefully stepping over a rosebush, she was wondering where in heaven’s name Paul could be. It was growing quite late, and he had not even sent a message. She clasped her daffodils and roses more securely and looked up, a tiny frown puckering her forehead. She saw him standing but a few feet away from her, looking at her. Just looking. How long had he been there, just looking at her? Why was he just looking at her like that? She flushed red to the roots of her hair. No, that was silly. She was thirty-six years old. She shouldn’t be flushing all because he was staring at her, just standing there, saying nothing, just staring at her.
This was ridiculous. She nearly yelled, “Paul, however did you find me?”
“Crupper is very observant. I’ve been here but a moment. Less than a moment, actually.” It had been a bit longer, but who cared?
“Oh, that’s all right then, perhaps.” So he hadn’t been staring at her.
Well, piffle. She wished she could curse as fluently and raucously as Arabella, but she couldn’t. Every time she tried, she pictured her own mother’s face, and turned white. Her dear mama had made her eat soap every time she had even whispered the mildest of curses.
What was she to say now that wouldn’t embarrass him? She could but try.
“I thought that perhaps you were too busy with your patients to come to us today.” Surely that was innocent enough.
“Only the imminent birth of triplets would have prevented me. May I carry those murderous-looking cutters for you, my dear?”
“Yes, thank you, Paul.” She handed him the flower cutters and found that the mundane action brought back some perspective. The good Lord knew she needed it. Yes, everything between them was back into focus, and he was again her old friend of many years. Her old friend. How depressing that sounded to her. Still, she could not recall having ever found his dark brown corduroy suit so terribly smart. His eyes were very nearly the same color, filled with a
sharp cutting intelligence and with humor, and oddly, they seemed all the brighter today.
Dr. Branyon matched his stride to her shorter one as they walked through the ornamented parterre back to the front lawn. “How is our Arabella getting on?”
“Do you mean her physical health or her relationship with Justin?” He chuckled, smiling down at her. “Well, knowing my little Bella, she is again as healthy as that black beast she persists in riding. Justin, ah, now there’s the rub. I do believe he will handle her very well. He isn’t stupid. I imagine he’s quite excellent at strategy.”
“I don’t know about his strategy, but they did ride together this morning. I have no idea what went on between them. Neither said a word about it. I was also pleased that neither of them looked any the worse for it at luncheon.”
“You mean that it didn’t appear that they’d had a fistfight.”
“Exactly. If Arabella wasn’t as talkative as she usually is, well, she wasn’t, at least, overtly rude to the earl. If I am not mistaken, I think the both of them are in the library poring over the Evesham Abbey accounts. Arabella knows as much as her father about running the estate.
Poor child, I remember him drumming fact after fact into her young head.
Dear Mr. Blackwater, the earl’s agent, almost swallowed his tongue when Arabella issued her first orders to him at the advanced age of sixteen.”
“What did he say? Do you remember?”
“As I recall, Arabella told me he gaped at her like a hooked trout.
Arabella’s father just gave the man a look. As you know, it normally took only a look to bring anyone into line. Except Arabella. I can still hear him yelling at her and she was yelling back. I used to quake in my slippers. But the two of them would come out of the estate room, grinning at each other like the very best of friends. He admired her as much as she did him, you know that.”
“Oh yes, I know that. I got the look a couple of times. I don’t remember hearing about that incident.” He laughed this time, a deep rich sound that made the daffodils and roses tremble for a moment in Lady Ann’s hand. Tremble? Goodness, she would be a halfwit by the end of the week if she didn’t get a hold on herself.
“How do you think the earl will adjust to Bella’s most unwomanish competence in a traditional man’s domain? To boot, the chit is nearly eight years his junior.”
“To tell the truth, Paul—and no, I am not being biased—he seemed to me to be rather pleased. I think he will come to admire her tremendously.
Actually, I think he will exploit her shamelessly. I don’t think he has any particular enthusiasm for estate accounting.” Dr. Branyon paused and dropped a hand on Lady Ann’s shoulder, gripping it an instant. She stopped immediately and turned to face him. “I think you’re right, Ann. Though I can easily picture some ferocious fights between them, they are perhaps better suited than most. Arabella needs a mate of great strength, else she would render the unfortunate’s life miserable. As for Justin, I vow that, given an obliging, meek little spouse, he would become a household tyrant in very short order.” She’d rather hoped he would say something else. Well, he was right about Arabella and the new earl. She just prayed the two of them would see things in the same light. She wanted to sigh, but couldn’t. She said lightly instead, “How very tidily you wrap up all my concerns.” Had she really been concerned? She didn’t think so, but she’d had to say something. She gaily plucked a daffodil from her bunch and with a mock curtsy pulled its stem through a buttonhole in his coat.
“And now I’m a dapper dog as well.” He smiled tenderly down at her upturned face.
Lady Ann gulped. That look of his surely must be intended for something he was thinking. It couldn’t be intended for her. It was too tender a look, too intimate, too close. Suddenly, she gave a guilty start. “Oh goodness, I forgot about Elsbeth. She will think I’ve given her not a thought, poor child. And I have, just not for the past fifteen minutes or so. And that is all your fault, sir. Come, let’s find her. It is nearly teatime.” She didn’t care a whit about tea or anything else, but she knew her duty, at least most of the time. Curse it.
He nodded, but then, without warning, he pulled up short in his tracks and gave a shout of laughter.
“Whatever is that for?”
“It just occurred to me, my dear Ann, that you will soon be the Dowager Countess of Strafford. You, a dowager. It boggles the imagination. You look like Arabella’s sister, not her mother. Oh, how you’re going to be teased and twitted and given such very complacent looks. Some of the old bats will be delighted. They’ll doubtless try to convince themselves that you’ve gone all wrinkled and gray and gloat.”
“Well, I am becoming quite matronly. Soon I just might have a gray hair.
Goodness, do you suppose I’ll pull it out? Do you suppose that by the time I’m of truly advanced years, I’ll be bald?”
“You may tug and pull as you please. I promise now to buy you a number of wigs if you need one. Also, I will begin right now to assist you. Here is my arm to support you. When you can no longer walk without me, then I shall prescribe a cane.”
She had no idea that her blue eyes were dancing as wildly as the wicked new waltz from Germany, but he did. He was enchanted. Oh God, he was more than enchanted. He was King Arthur. He was Merlin. He was everything in the world that could be enchanted and entranced and charmed and so in love that he could barely bring himself to breathe.
All he could do was watch her mouth as she said, all gaiety and lightness, “A cane. What a lovely thought. If anyone offended me, I could crack him on the head.”
Elsbeth did not believe that Lady Ann had already lost interest in her.
Nor did she believe that Lady Ann had gotten herself into an accident.
Actually, she was not thinking about Lady Ann at all. Rather, she was staring off at nothing in particular, her small hand poised above her stitchery, her colorful creation for the moment forgotten. It was bluebells around a pond, or some such sort of water.
She was thinking about all the fun that awaited her in London. Balls, routs, even plays in Drury Lane. So much to do, so much to see. She had heard of the Pantheon Bazaar all of her life, where one could fine literally any color ribbon and myriad other gewgaws. And there was, of course, Almack’s, that most holy of inner sanctums, where young girls spent untold hours dancing with charming, dashing young men. Her ten thousand pounds would ensure her foothold in London society. With Lady Ann, the widow of a peer and military hero, she could not imagine any door being closed to her. So excited was she at the prospect that her natural shyness and hesitancy in mixing in polite society lessened considerably.
She frowned, thinking suddenly of Josette. How she wished that her old servant would cease with her dark mutterings against every Deverill in sight and out of sight. After all, had not her father proven his love for her? Such a vast sum he had bequeathed to her. Elsbeth sighed. Josette was just getting old. Her wits were becoming clouded, too. Just this morning, Josette had called her Magdalaine.
Quite clearly she had said, “Come closer to the window, Magdalaine. How can I mend this flounce with you fidgeting about so?” Elsbeth had chosen not to remind her faithful old servant that she was not her mother, Magdalaine. She had docilely moved to the window.
It was then that she had seen the earl and Arabella. “Oh, just look, Josette,” she said, pointing as she moved closer to the window, “there come Arabella and the earl. Look at their stallions, how fast they’re running.” Indeed, the two great plunging stallions were cannoning across the drive onto the front lawn. “They are racing! There, Arabella has won.
Oh my, just look how her horse is plunging and rearing. Oh, how exciting.” Elsbeth shivered. Horses seemed quite unpredictable to her; they were nasty, jittery beasts, and not to be trusted. She hated them, but she would never admit it to Arabella.
Elsbeth heard Arabella’s shout of victory and watcher her alight from her horse, unassisted. Ah, she was so graceful, her skirts whirli
ng around her. Josette drew closer, narrowed her watery eyes against the glare of the morning sun, and muttered with heavy disapproval, “Just like her father she is, brash and conceited. Not a lady like you, my little pet.
Leaping off her horse as if she were a man. And look at the new earl—encouraging her, that’s what he’s doing. Laughing at her antics. It sickens me and it will sicken him. Men do not like women to be strong and outspoken. He will give her orders soon enough, once they are married.
And she will obey because she has no choice. Magdalaine had no choice. I know.”
Elsbeth wasn’t listening. She was thinking with a slight twinge of envy that she was older than Arabella, yet she felt so terribly—unfinished, as if God hadn’t cared enough to give her due consideration, to wonder perhaps if she could be prettier, even wittier in her wit, which, in her view, was nil. Well, she was wittier than poor old Josette.
Elsbeth drew her thoughts back to the present. Her hands were still poised motionlessly above her stitchery. It was quite ridiculous, she decided, to be jealous of Arabella. After all, it was she, Elsbeth, who had the ten thousand pounds. All free and clear. She didn’t have to do anything. It was hers, simply hers. If Arabella did not comply with her father’s instructions, she would have nothing. Arabella would have to marry the new earl. Elsbeth shivered. She found the new earl almost as terrifying as the huge bay stallion he rode. He was so large, so overwhelming. He seemed to fill the room when he walked into it. She felt a sudden fearful tremor that caused her small hand to tremble. It was a delicious sort of fear that somehow caused her breathing to quicken. Oh dear, that wasn’t right, was it? She grasped her needle firmly between her fingers and quickly set a stitch of bright yellow silk.
She did not look up until Lady Ann and Dr. Branyon came strolling into the Velvet Room, side by side, their heads close in quiet conversation.
She sensed something about them that was somehow different, something that she did not quite understand. Not that it mattered. They were old.
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