Magnus took pride in meeting his opponent head on and without flinching. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Pilkington.” He turned slightly and nodded to the girls. “Ladies.”
“I have not received your response to our Summer Soiree invitation yet, Mr. Stanwyck.”
Ah, yes, the blasted soiree.
Magnus had begun to suspect that soiree was another word for “curate auction.”
“I apologize for my tardiness in responding, Mrs. Pilkington. I haven’t forgotten. I’m afraid I’m not yet sure of the date of my brother’s wedding and I couldn’t miss that.”
Mrs. Pilkington’s pale, reptilian eyes widened. “Would that be your brother the Earl of Sydell?”
Magnus ground his teeth; his family connections had only served to increase his appeal as a matrimonial object. “No, ma’am. It would be my eldest brother but one.”
“Lord Michael?”
The fact that she knew his brother’s name sent a frisson of terror up his spine. Clearly she’d acquired a copy of the peerage.
The only reason she wasn’t “Lord Magnusing” him all over the county was because of the vicar’s comment early on in Magnus’s curacy: that the title of a man of God superseded those given by men, even the King.
“Yes, it is my brother Michael who will be—” A movement across the street captured his attention. It was Miss Griffin and her unusual aunt leaving the mercantile, each carrying paper-wrapped parcels.
“Who is that?”
He turned to find Mrs. Pilkington’s tiercel gaze fastened on the two women.
“That is Miss Griffin and her aunt, Mrs. Trent.”
“Oh, the new tenants at Halliburton Manor.”
“You know of them?” he asked in some surprise.
She gave Magnus an annoyingly smug smile. “Mr. Pilkington was instrumental in the preparation of the house.”
Mr. Pilkington was in the building trade, so that was her grand way of saying her husband had done some repairs on the long-vacant cottage.
“She’s come from London to partake of our healthy air,” Magnus said.
Just then, Mrs. Trent threw her head back and laughed rather raucously, drawing the attention of more than one passerby.
Mrs. Pilkington frowned at this open display of revelry. “I do hope she is not a hurly-burly sort.”
Her youngest daughter, Emily—the only one who didn’t have a militant gleam in her eyes—squirmed at her parent’s harsh statement. “Oh, Mama.”
Mrs. Pilkington’s head whipped around, her eyes narrowing and her long nose twitching, the expression causing her to bear a striking resemblance to the ferret on the sign she had the misfortune to be standing beneath. She fixed her daughter with a freezing look. “Yes, Emily?”
The girl stared; her eyes held like a rabbit before a hawk.
Magnus stepped in. “I hope you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Pilkington, but I’m afraid I’m late for Mrs. Tisdale.”
An unchristian snort escaped from her mouth. “Oh, her again, is it? A creaking door hangs longest.”
Magnus suppressed the flash of irritation he felt at her unkind comment and swallowed his retort—that Mrs. Tisdale was not a creaking door, but a sick, lonely old lady. Instead he smiled, bowed, and headed off down the street. Conveniently in the same direction as Miss Griffin and her aunt, not that he had any plans to catch up with them.
The path to Mrs. Tisdale’s tiny cottage pulled him off Miss Griffin’s trail not far out of town, but it did not pull her out of his mind.
Magnus told himself that his interest in her was a normal reaction for any man. After all, he couldn’t recall ever meeting a woman as beautiful as Miss Griffin. In addition to her striking auburn hair, creamy complexion, and remarkably voluptuous figure that her walking costume had only served to accentuate, she also possessed a kittenish upper lip that made her plush lower lip appear positively sinful. And, if all that wasn’t enough, her tilted green eyes had sparkled with a weary humor that had shot right to his chest.
Well, to be honest, it had shot a few other places in his body, as well. Just because he was a man of the Church did not mean he was immune to beauty and feminine charms.
Magnus adjusted the strap on the battered leather satchel he always carried, the jars and bottles inside making it heavier than usual. The vicar’s wife had loaded him down with calf’s foot jelly and a poultice that she’d promised to one of the parishioners he planned to call on today. Magnus didn’t have the heart to tell Mrs. Heeley that her jelly most often got passed from household to household until it finally ended up in a pig trough on an outlying farm.
Mrs. Heeley was widely known to be the worst cook in the county—perhaps all of Britain. But she was so good-natured that nobody wanted to hurt her feelings. And so she continued to preserve her bodyweight in dreadful jams and jellies every year, much to the chagrin of her parishioners.
“I don’t know how you can bear it—all those people,” Magnus’s oldest brother Cecil had said the last time Magnus had gone home to visit.
Although Cecil and he were the oldest and youngest of the six brothers they were still the closest. Magnus found their mutual affection both amusing and odd because they had nothing at all in common. Cecil had no time for people—indeed, he actively avoided them—and Magnus rarely met a person he didn’t like.
“What people do you mean, Ceec?” Magnus had asked his brother.
“I mean those malingering sick people, lonely old pensioners, and desperate on-the-shelf spinsters—all clambering for your attention and clinging to you like so many limpets.”
Magnus smiled now as he recalled Cecil’s horror. His brother liked hunting, hounds, and horses. Other than that, Cecil seemed uninterested in the world around him, not the best characteristic for a man who would one day inherit the marquisate and its extensive properties and people.
Their parents had long despaired of him ever pulling his attention away from the sporting life long enough to marry and produce children. It wasn’t that Cecil was a carouser—he didn’t enjoy drinking or gambling—it was just that he had no interest in flirting, dancing, or attending house parties.
When Magnus hadn’t been quick enough to refute Cecil’s words his brother had continued in the same vein. “I don’t understand you, Mag. You’ve got Briar House and a good chunk of land. With some damned fine trails,” he’d added, because there was nothing more important than fox hunting. “You don’t have to do this curate bobbery.”
Magnus had been having this discussion with members of his family ever since he’d decided, at the age of fifteen, to join the clergy. By the time he was twenty he’d given up trying to explain his call to the Church. He was the first, and perhaps only, member of his family as far back as anyone knew to have shown an interest in a career usually taken—unwillingly in most instances—by second sons.
While Magnus had stopped trying to explain his calling to others, he still had to justify moving so far from home to pursue it.
“You don’t need to go all the way down South to be a mere curate.” Cecil said the word south as if it were a vulgar epithet. Which it was to most Yorkshiremen.
“I know that, Ceec, but I like New Bickford and I like Reverend Heeley. And, as difficult as it is for you to believe, I like being a curate and I like tending to old people, on-the-shelf spinsters, and—who else was it you said?”
Cecil had ignored his jest. “How the devil a man can engage in so much blasted praying and live like a monk, I’ll never know.”
The comment about living like a monk had surprised Magnus; after all, Cecil had been the most loyal man alive to his mistress, Alice Thompkins, an older widow who lived in one of the cottage on their father’s estate. Magnus guessed his brother would have married Mrs. Tompkins long ago if he thought his parents would permit it.
Now, Magnus’s other brothers—Michael, Henry, James, and Philip—on the other hand, were a completely different story from Cecil. Tales of the earl
’s wild younger sons were told in every taproom in West Riding.
Lord how those four had teased Magnus when he’d turned sixteen and was still a virgin. It was a testament to his incredibly stubborn nature—which his doting mother claimed was his only sin—that he’d not allowed them to drag him to a brothel. But he’d stood firm. And he’d remained chaste even when other men at his seminary visited brothels or kept mistresses. Such activity wasn’t encouraged, but it was tolerated as long as it was kept discrete. After all, more than one of his fellows had observed, becoming a vicar was not like becoming a Catholic priest.
No, they weren’t taking a vow of celibacy, but Magnus couldn’t conscience paying women to slake his physical needs. Instead, he managed his needs himself, no matter how unfulfilling that might be, and looked forward to discovering the joys of the matrimonial bed with his wife. Until that day arrived, he tried to avoid thinking too much about the sexual act if he could help it. Today, he was finding he couldn’t help it.
Something about Miss Griffin had brought thoughts of a carnal nature to mind.
Magnus climbed the steps to Mrs. Tisdale’s tiny house, his face burning at the images running loose in his head. It wasn’t Miss Griffin’s fault that she emanated a seductive sensuality that wrapped around him like the tendrils of ivy.
An unwanted surge of lust rolled through him at the thought of her tilted eyes and that long upper lip. Magnus grimaced; the innocent young woman was probably unaware of the effect her face and figure had on men.
He pushed away the lustful thoughts and rapped on the front door.
Nobody answered, so he opened it a crack and stuck his head inside. The old lady was hard of hearing and her maid-of-all-work only came in the mornings. “Mrs. Tisdale?”
There was no answer so Magnus stepped inside and lowered his satchel to the hall floor. That was when he heard a faint tapping and soft cry overhead.
Magnus bolted for the narrow stairs. He’d never been anywhere on the second floor before but assumed it was where her bedchamber was.
“Mrs. Tisdale?” he called when he reached the landing, which held three doors. The first was a box room and the second a spare bedroom. He opened the third door more slowly. “Mrs. Tisdale?”
“Mister Stanwyck.” The voice, breathy and hoarse, came from the far side of the bed, which was unmade but empty.
Magnus found the old lady on the hardwood floor, her leg bent at an odd angle beneath her. He dropped down beside her and gently shifted her so her weight was not on her leg. She screamed.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Tisdale,” he soothed, covering her blue-veined, painfully thin legs with her flannel nightgown before turning to look at her face. Her eyes had closed and he was wondering if she’d lost consciousness when her papery lids fluttered open.
“Cold,” she said, even though the house was almost unbearably warm and humid
Magnus did not think that could be good. “I’m going to lift you onto the bed where you can get warm and be more comfortable.”
She grimaced but nodded.
As careful as he was picking her up, she still gave a blood curdling scream that tore at his heart. Not until he’d laid her down and covered her with the heavy quilt did he risk looking at her face.
She was staring at him, her eyes tight with pain.
“I need to go for the doctor.”
Her hand shot out far faster than he’d believed she could move. “No! Not yet.”
“But—”
“Just. . . don’t leave me alone. Stay a moment.” She was breathing too fast and bright spots of color had settled over her knife-sharp cheekbones. Her hand tightened on his, her bony fingers like the claws of a bird. “Please.”
It was the first time he’d heard her speak that particular word. “Of course I’ll stay.” He hooked a foot around a nearby chair and pulled it toward the bed without letting go of her hand.
“Scared.” Her breathing had slowed but was still jerky.
Magnus looked up from their joined hands at the word. Her blue eyes, usually so sharp and pitiless, were watery and vague.
“I’m here now, Mrs. Tisdale. Nothing to be afraid of.”
She nodded, her gaze still fixed upon him, her grip unbreakable.
Mrs. Tisdale was the village outcast. Magnus supposed there was somebody like her in every town in Britain. He had no idea what she’d done to earn the status and he doubted her neighbors remembered, either. She’d simply occupied the role for so many decades it was like an old coat that fit too comfortably to shed.
He knew better than to ask a woman’s age, but he’d seen a book she’d left open once and the flyleaf had contained the words: “To my darling Eunice, for those times we can’t be together. James” The date below the inscription had been 1751. Even if she’d only been twenty it meant she was now somewhere in her eighties. The elegant bones of her face and her huge, deep-set eyes proclaimed she must have been a beautiful young woman.
Magnus realized her grip had loosened and her lips were parted. Her breathing was stertorous, but even and deep: she was sleeping at last.
He carefully disentangled their fingers, tip-toed from the room, and then ran with undignified haste to fetch the doctor.
***
Melissa poured herself another cup of tea—which she’d found was far easier on her stomach than coffee—and broke the seal on Joss Gormley’s most recent letter. Joss wasn’t only her best friend; he was also managing the brothel in Melissa’s absence.
Dear Mel:
I hope this letter finds you hale, hearty, and relaxing in the village of New Bickford. Business continues as usual. Laura asks that I pass along her regards and also wanted me to remind you about the expansion she proposed just before you left on your trip.
Melissa sighed. She’d been avoiding thinking about the proposal that Laura Maitland, one of her other business partners, had made. To be honest, her heart simply hadn’t been in her business since she’d coughed up blood and almost died that day last fall. A brush with mortality made one reevaluate what was important in one’s life.
She frowned at the unpleasant memory of that day, took another piece of toast, and turned back to the letter.
Please don’t get angry.
Mel shook her head. “Oh, Joss. What in the world is it now?”
Laura did not stop at her reminder; she approached the owner of number nine and made an independent offer for the property, which he is currently considering.
Mel dropped her toast. “What?”
I know you wanted to wait until you, Laura, and Hugo had a chance to discuss the matter and agree on an offer for the property, but . . .
Melissa growled. She had wanted to wait. Now the seller, a hideously sly man, would know they wanted the building and would double the price. She ground her teeth. Laura was clearly running amok without Melissa there to curb her. While she could never love owning a brothel, The White House was her future. If she could sell it for a profit—like the woman she’d bought it from—then she could retire in the next few years. But that wouldn’t happen if she paid a fortune for her next expansion.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered.
I know how her behavior will have annoyed you, but it is nothing to Hugo’s annoyance.
A laugh broke out of her as Joss’s wry observation. “I’ll wager you’re correct, Joss,” she said, smiling at the thought of her most prickly business partner’s reaction to Laura’s rash behavior.
I didn’t think Hugo had it in him to feel anger—or anything other than self-love, really.
Joss despised Hugo—Melissa’s most popular employee with both women and men—and made no secret of it. Of course, a lot of that dislike was due to a rather wicked trick Melissa had played on Joss a few months ago, when she’d used Hugo to get between Joss and the woman Joss had stubbornly refused to admit he loved.
It had been a foolishly dangerous plan, but it had worked.
; She knew she should be grateful that the two men hadn’t killed each other that night. Melissa’s view was that all’s well that ends well. Unfortunately, Joss hadn’t seen it that way. While his anger at Melissa had abated, his loathing for Hugo had doubled. And, after he’d blackened Hugo’s eye, the feeling was mutual.
Mel made a tsking sound at the memory and turned back to her letter.
The result of Laura’s precipitate action is that Hugo and Laura hate each other more than ever. I think there will be trouble between those two before too long. I’m glad I sold my interest in the business to you. At least I don’t have to worry about the two of them badgering me night and day to sell to them.
No, but Melissa would when she returned.
If I return.
Mel paused, the letter crackling between her clenched fingers. Now where had that thought come from? Of course, she was going back—where else would she go?
Her mouth tightened. Nowhere: there was nowhere else to go. At least not anywhere she wouldn’t have to hide her past and who she was. Even staying here temporarily brought a certain amount of anxiety. Men from all over Britain knew her and there was always a possibility—nay, an inevitability—that she would encounter one even in a place as bucolic as New Bickford.
Well, no point dwelling on that right now. This was only her third day here and nobody had recognized her yet. The handsome curate floated into her mind. She snorted. He was one more thing she could never have and should put out of her mind. The two of them were so different they might as well be separate species.
She straightened out the crumpled sheets of paper and turned back to the letter, the rest of which was largely to do with business, some repairs, two other new employees, and a young lord whom Joss had barred from the men’s side of the business for excessive debt. It wasn’t until the end that he said something about himself.
A Figure of Love Page 36
