Chapter Eighteen
‘So what do you think of the poor old place, Marianne?’ For once Alaric sounded uncertain, as if a lot more depended on her answer than it ought to.
‘Someone should be very ashamed at the state of it. Even my Great-Uncle Hubert kept the roof repaired and windows mended, although that was about all he did do when he was master of Owlet Manor for the last fifty years of his life.’
‘I know it is in a very poor state, but roofs can be mended and windows replaced. Could you live here, do you think?’
‘Is any of it habitable?’ she said suspiciously, because they had only set out on a drive today and he was even more devious than she thought he was now he was presenting her with a potential home rather than a picturesque view.
‘That depends on how high your standards are,’ he said evasively.
Marianne could tell he had fallen in love with the place since he had evaded her perfectly sensible question. She looked down at the derelict old house and the wild wood that had grown up around it since a gardener last came anywhere near the place. It was the perfect site for a manor house, just large enough to be a comfortable family home, if only it had a comfortable family living in it. What it could be, whispered a plea for someone to rescue it from ruin. The man was cunning, though, presenting her with a challenge like this one. With splendid views across the Severn Plain from up here and the sheltering hollow where the house was set out of the worst of the winds that would whistle up the Bristol Channel, she would need a heart of stone not to be tempted by its forlorn air of waiting for them to make things right again.
‘I think we can safely say my standards are not high after some of the billets Daniel and I endured on the march, but what about you, my lord? Could you put up with the howling draughts and leaking roofs there must be in such a place while the builders repaired and redesigned the place for modern living around you, or would you visit the place occasionally until all the work was done and live in splendour at Stratford Park?’
‘I would hire a house with proper windows and a roof nearby and be comfortable while I kept an eye on those builders and made sure it was all done as we wanted it. You would not have me leave them to it, would you?’
‘No,’ she said carefully, knowing he was expecting her to demand her say in how it would all be done and not quite ready to fall into his trap just yet. ‘But why do you even want another house? Don’t you have enough already?’
‘I have more than I know what to do with, but this one would be yours. I know you secretly long for a home from some of the things Juno has said in her letters and my own incredible powers of observation. I want you to have one where only you can say who goes and stays and what is repaired and what replaced. I admit that I came here looking for a home where Juno could be happy if you washed your hands of both of us and walked away, but I knew as soon as I saw it that this place should be yours and somehow I would have to persuade you to let me share it with you. And if anything ever happens to me I want you to have a home that will always be yours to do with as you please.’
‘Why would anything happen to you, Alaric? And how do you think I could endure living here without you? People make homes, not stones and timbers and leaky roofs.’
‘My brother died when he was five and twenty, so I know I cannot promise I will live until I am ninety and die at the same moment you do, Marianne, but I have no intention of going anywhere without you if I can help it.’
‘Good,’ she said and her heart missed a beat as she thought about the uncertainty of life and he was right, it was all a risk, but so few things in life that were worth having came without a bundle of those. She loved him so fiercely and truly and did not want him to think he had won her over with a house. It was important he would always know that he came before any of the riches and wonders he could shower on her and Juno and any other family they managed to make along the way. ‘You have fallen in love with this poor old house, haven’t you?’ she said suspiciously.
And there was his shamefaced look he wore when he was trying to hide his deepest feelings and at least she recognised it now. She hid a smile when he decided they needed to take a closer look at the place to disguise his discomfort at being found out so easily. She was very glad of the warm rugs over their knees and the not-quite-so-hot brick at her feet he had provided to keep the chilly autumn air at bay as best he could.
He had surprised her by driving up to Miss Donne’s house this morning in his beautifully sprung curricle and demanding her company and please to hurry before his precious pair of perfectly matched Welsh greys caught a cold. Now Alaric looped the long tail of his driving whip neatly after giving the high-stepping pair the signal to risk the first part of the drive to this forlorn old house so she could take a closer look.
‘It needs someone to love it before it falls down,’ he finally admitted when the ruts in the overgrown lane made it criminal to risk his horses’ legs further by trying to get even closer, so he halted them again.
‘It might take a lot of effort to keep on loving it at times,’ she cautioned. ‘Most people you ask to come and repair it will advise you to have it pulled down and build something modern and convenient in its place.’
‘Would you?’
‘No, but I must be as totty-headed as you are because I would rather restore it and add a few modern touches to make it easier to live in.’
‘Such as?’
‘I need to see more before I am able to tell you that.’
‘Then we might as well go in and take a look,’ he said and heaved a vast bundle of huge keys out of the boot as the tiger shook out the rugs that had been folded up in there to cover the horses. ‘Walk them for me to save them from a chill, will you, Portman?’ he asked the wizened little man who had not said a word in Marianne’s hearing all the way here and just nodded and went to croon at his precious horses now.
‘You have already bought this sad old house, have you not?’ Marianne asked when Alaric offered her his free arm, since the other one was fully occupied with that ring full of ancient and heavy-looking keys.
‘I thought it would make a fine place for our orphans,’ he admitted with a slightly hunted look as she gave him a sceptical look, but still took his arm, because there were so many potholes in the unkempt drive it would have been foolish not to.
‘Your orphans,’ she corrected him nevertheless.
‘Don’t you like the idea of them learning to be happy here and growing up in the fresh air and sunshine?’
‘Of course I do. I am not sure what the locals will think if they are unruly as some of the children who used to trail along with the army on the march.’
‘There you are, you see, I shall need you to keep order.’
‘I doubt it, Lord Stratford,’ she told him severely, but she was warming to the scheme he seemed so set on carrying out whether she agreed to marry him or not and he knew it. ‘Now stop prevaricating and let me see inside.’
* * *
‘It is very bad,’ Alaric admitted half an hour later and even he looked doubtful now. ‘Perhaps those builders you told me about earlier are right. It could be better to pull it down and begin again.’
‘I think the kitchen will have to be rebuilt before any self-respecting cook will agree to cook as much as an egg in there and you are right—and the east wing is beyond repair, but the rest seems possible. There are even more cobwebs and several tons more dust in here than there were at Owlet Manor when I got there, but most of the timbers seem sound and even where the rain has got in they can be renewed or replaced once the roof is mended.’
‘And there are details it would be a shame to throw away, like the grand staircase and all this fine oak panelling. I am not sure I want to sleep in a state bed as vast as the one in the best bedchamber—I might lose you of a night.’
‘You have not got me to lose yet,’ she reminded him, but she was w
eakening and had just gone another step closer to giving in. She could feel him being a little bit smug and a lot more impatient again for her final ‘yes’ to Lord and Lady Stratford and their tumbledown old folly of a house.
‘There is all the world yet to gain then,’ he said with a pretend sigh. ‘How I wish there was even one room here clean enough to seduce you in and bend you to my wicked ways with hot kisses and a great deal more,’ he said with a serious question in his wary expression as he looked down at her this time.
‘So do I,’ she answered it quite seriously.
‘And your brother has finally taken his wife on a bride journey, now all his crops are in and they have a new farm manager in place to make sure there is at least some cider left when they come home.’
‘So he has,’ Marianne said dreamily.
‘And I have wanted to find out how far this place is from Owlet Manor ever since I first discovered it so that you will not feel cut off from your family when we live here.’
‘Do not push your luck, my lord.’
‘But, of course, there is the problem that without the prospect of a wedding there can be no bedding for us,’ he said virtuously.
‘You know how much you want me,’ she said and it was not vain of her to point that fact out, it was purely practical. She was so deep in love and longing and needing him now it felt like a fever in her blood.
‘I do, but I also know how much you want me, Mrs Turner.’
‘Do not remind me,’ she murmured and tried to blank out the gnaw of frustrated need burning at the centre of her that was threatening to become a wildfire blown out of control as he stared back at her with one of his own in his brilliantly blue eyes.
‘I will use any means I can to persuade you into my bed and my arms and my life for good, Marianne. Otherwise we will both have to burn and we know whose fault that is. I might run mad and look what you will have done then.’
‘I...’ Marianne let her voice tail off because she could not think of any reason strong enough to keep this raging need at bay any longer. The burn of unsated need deep within her and the sting of wanting and not having was sapping her rational mind and he had already turned her set-in-stone determination not to marry him into a whole flock of ‘maybes’ and ‘yes, I will.’ ‘I am burning, I am so hungry for you I cannot lie about it any longer and you are right and I do love you, Alaric. But how can we make it for good when we are so very different in so many ways?’
‘Because love matters and wherever and whenever it comes along it should not be ignored and pushed aside. You loved Sergeant Daniel Turner so finely and recklessly and so well, why would you make a second love with me into something less, Marianne? I honour the man for having the sense to love you so completely, but you two were supposed to be divided by birth and education and goodness knows how many other barriers, but you demolished them all between you. Am I so much less of a man you will not do the same for love of me?’
There was all the doubt he was a good man with a true heart in his eyes now and it was her fault. She had met the real man under the title when he was laid low by his head injury and still stinging from Juno’s rejection. And now he had Marianne Yelverton-Turner to make him feel unwanted and uncertain of his many and far-too-plentiful attractions, he did not need his mother to reject and belittle him, did he? She hated herself for putting those doubts back in his clear blue gaze again and found her courage at long last.
‘No, you are a wonderful man, Alaric. Strong, loving and true and your brother would be so proud of the man you are now, but how can I ever live up to your high standards if I agree to marry you?’
‘If you ask me, the boot is on the other foot.’
‘I do love you,’ she admitted, ‘and it has nothing to do with this poor forlorn old house before you get carried away by the idea I would only agree to marry you to get my hands on it. I wanted you from the instant I met your bloodshot eyes through the gap in Miss Donne’s door. I knew I would have to want the instant I found out who you really were, but that did not mean you were not the unshaven pirate baron who stole my heart when I thought I did not even have one left to steal.’
‘And I wanted you just as instantly, my fierce Mrs Turner, and never mind the exhaustion dragging at my heels and the driving need to find Juno and make sure she was safe. I did not know you liked unshaven pirates, by the way. I shall have to work a lot harder on some sea-dog ways.’
‘Please do not. I doubt the world could cope with you rampaging around it, stealing cargoes and kidnapping lady pirates to carry off to your lair.’
‘My, you do have an exotic imagination.’
‘I do,’ she told him with a silly, besotted smile as a good many of her fantasies offering a future of wild lovemaking could be hers if only she could reach out and grasp it and forget all her doubts that it was the right thing to do. ‘What if you regret me in a few years’ time, Alaric?’ she asked very seriously as she pushed those tempting scenarios aside for a maybe later.
‘Did you ask Turner that when you packed your bag and stole out of your father’s vicarage with the dawn to find him and marry him, Marianne?’
‘No.’
‘Then why are you asking me to put a limit on my love for you? I will still love and need and desire you when I am in my dotage. Right now I am not quite sure which will come first, having you in my life and finally admitting we cannot live without one another or reaching my dotage before you will finally say “yes” to me.’
‘I am ready to right now,’ she told him, certainty that he was right exploding all her scruples at last. ‘I love you so much I have to believe we can cross off all the items on my list of why we should not marry, Alaric. I will love you until my dying day.’
‘Then will you marry me?’ he said and got down on both his knees, on this filthy floor inside this broken-down old house. ‘I love you beyond words and promises, Marianne, but please will you help me to remake Viscount Stratford and be my love and my wife as long as we both shall live?’
‘You had better do a lot of it, then,’ she told him acerbically. ‘I am not losing another love for life and having to spend mine without you, so you had better make up your mind to living with me for a very long time, Alaric, Lord Stratford.’
‘Is that a “yes”?’ he asked her, a world of hopes and dreams naked in his eyes along with a full measure of lust and a side dish of fantasy to add to the mix.
‘Of course it is, you silly viscount. Now will you finally get up and kiss me properly before I faint from pure need on this very dirty floor.’
‘Not yet,’ he replied tensely as he got to his feet and stood a frustrating few yards away from her.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I am not stopping once I have started and we have already established there is nowhere in this poor old wreck of a house fit for us to make love for the first time in the very long love affair we are about to begin.’
‘How fast can those horses of yours go, Alaric?’ she asked with a world of hot need opening out in front of her and an urgent desire for everything she had fantasised about him coming true as soon as they could get to a clean house with a clean bed in it.
‘Since I will not have you slammed about and bruised as we tear around corners and bounce over potholes, you are not about to find out.’
‘Then perhaps an inn...?’ She let her voice trail off as the suggestion lit even more fires in his already hot-blue gaze. ‘Your tiger would know what we were about, of course, but I really am beyond caring. I want you so much, Alaric.’
‘And do you really think he is going to tell anyone? The man only speaks to horses with the occasional grunt for me if he is in a particularly good mood.’
‘He does seem taciturn.’
‘He is and, even if he was the best gossip in England, I do not care who knows I love you to the edge of reason and I cannot keep my hands off yo
u for very much longer.’
‘Well, that is very good news as far as I am concerned since I feel the same way about you, but fine words butter no parsnips, my lord. Action is what is needed right now.’
‘I agree,’ he said and they could hardly fumble the ancient great lock on the front door back into place fast enough before they joined hands and ran carefully down the wild grass at the side of the drive because they might be in love and desperate to prove it to one another, but Lord Stratford had spent enough time laid up with damaged limbs and a broken head lately.
Chapter Nineteen
They did manage to contain themselves by maintaining a tight-lipped silence all the way back to Owlet Manor, but by the time they got there they were very glad to hand the curricle and horses over to the uncommunicative little man who had been sitting up behind them for miles frowning over their heads at his precious horses.
‘Hurry,’ Marianne urged Alaric when he would have stopped to say something polite and gentlemanly to Fliss’s new housemaids.
‘Now they will gossip,’ he said as they ran up the familiar stairs to the quaint old bedchamber Marianne had fallen in love with on her first day at Owlet Manor. It seemed fitting that the first place that had felt like home since she left her father’s old vicarage would be the place where she first made love to her future lord and true lover.
Unsuitable Bride For A Viscount (The Yelverton Marriages Book 2) Page 20
