How could one’s own judgment err so terribly? She had felt so certain that at last she’d found love. So certain!
She should never have told him of her troubles. Never should have gotten involved with him in the first place. All her friends had warned her of his motives. Fortune hunter. Rake. But even fortune hunters and rakes could fall in love. So she had told herself. So she had believed.
You terrible, unforgivable fool.
His face, when she had told him of her financial troubles . . . She had never seen a sneer form so quickly.
If Nello told tales abroad, what would she do then? For there was no one less popular in society than a widow desperate for funds.
“You did not simply fall into the bushes, Mrs. Chudderley. It would appear that once there, you rolled.”
As the doctor glanced up, a trick of the light turned his eyes to a deeper blue. The effect caught like a hook in her stomach.
She stared at him. He was not handsome, precisely—but his face rewarded study. Bold cheekbones. Striking eyes and a very firm jaw. He had a cleft in his chin that begged to be touched.
Something chemical seemed to be bubbling inside her, a reaction unbalancing in its vigor. She would embrace it, gladly. It was better than weeping. “How clumsy of me,” she said. “Are you certain your roses didn’t suffer for it?” She could offer to replace them with something lovely from her hothouse. Could deliver them herself, in fact.
“Oh, the roses are thriving,” he said easily. “Certainly they fared better than your hands.”
“Indeed.” She tried for a teasing tone. “A lady should always wear gloves on her midnight ventures. How brazen you must think me!”
He gave her another brief lift of his brow, a look she could not read. Or perhaps she would only have preferred that it be unreadable, for it reminded her as strongly as words that he had not merely found her unconscious in his bushes, but drunk besides—a far greater brazenness than the lack of gloves.
Mortification burned through her again.
One could not blame him for condemning your behavior.
The thought seemed to announce itself in her mother’s voice. She frowned and glanced toward the window, letting the brightness of the sunshine scald her eyes until she could swallow the knot that had come into her throat. Enough. Don’t think on that now.
Mama would never have liked Nello. But she had liked Alan Chudderley, so her judgment, too, had not proved so sound.
What a hash I’ve made of everything. Mama would never have foreseen it. “My golden girl,” she’d called Liza. Gentle, kind, misguided Mama. Nobody would ever again look at Liza with such faith.
The thought was too painful, and her sharp breath too loud; it caught the doctor’s attention.
“Yes,” he said, “this one is the deepest.” His low voice had a rich, soothing, almost honeyed quality to it—the voice, she supposed, of a man born to sing.
Indeed, he was very well spoken for a doctor. She could not catch a hint of his origins. “Where is your home, Mr. Grey?” She would focus not on her own wretched state, but on making him comfortable. She would show him that it was all right to address her less professionally, more . . . flirtatiously. A distraction was what she needed.
He dabbed a length of gauze in the liquid his housekeeper had brought—sharp-smelling, almost like vinegar. “North of here.” Before she could insist on a good deal more specificity, he added, “This may sting.”
As he laid the tisane to the long scratch bisecting her forearm, she sucked in an obliging breath. It didn’t hurt, of course. Only a ninny would imagine that it hurt. But she supposed she had no cause for surprise if he imagined her an idiot.
Your recent behavior invites all manner of cruel judgments.
Liza bit the inside of her cheek to stem the next prick of tears. Even in death, it seemed, Mama could not hold her tongue. Would this nattering voice never leave her in peace? It seemed only to grow stronger with each passing day.
Dared she ask him for a peg of whisky? It would lessen her headache. Whisky was held to be medicinal, was it not?
“The headache will diminish,” said Mr. Grey—startling her, until she realized that she was rubbing her temple. “Be sure to take fluids until it does,” he added. “Broth and tea, preferably.”
The dear, sweet bumpkin! He issued his instructions as though he imagined this was the first time she had drunk to excess. Only the kindness in his eyes stopped her from laughing at him. Indeed, as she looked into them, the ache in her heart seemed to ease a little.
“You are very decent,” she said. “A true gentleman, sir.” Perhaps they all inhabited the middling classes. That would explain their rarity in her world.
The compliment made him frown. “I’m a doctor, Mrs. Chudderley. This is what I do.”
“Perhaps you see it so.” But some men, on finding a woman unconscious in the night . . .
She laid her hand over his where it cupped her elbow. His fingers twitched, the only sign of his surprise. His knuckles felt slightly rough. Of course they did. He worked for his living.
The idea caused a flush to move through her. Exotic creature. Capable, skilled hands. This man did not merely know how to handle reins and hunting rifles. Pity that true gentlemen and handsome bank accounts so rarely coincided. “Thank you,” she said.
Their eyes met. That electric current seemed to snap into place again.
“My pleasure,” he murmured.
She drew in a great breath of him. He smelled so . . . masculine. A great, muscled laborer of a man, with no notion of proper fashions, no inkling that she might be one of the more famous beauties in the country. Ludicrous, perfectly absurd, but she felt a sudden, overpowering wave of fondness. He was just lovely. Pity she couldn’t keep him—simply take him back with her to Havilland Hall, and have him tend to her arms and scowl very adorably at her every morning she woke up with a sore head.
The door opened. He pulled free of her and pushed to his feet. Had they been doing anything remotely inappropriate, or had there been a shade less grace in his movement, she might well have characterized him as springing away.
“Splendid,” he said to the housekeeper, “thank you, Mrs. Brown,” and waved toward the tea table.
Clearly he was unnerved. Why else should he imagine that his servant needed direction on where to set the tray? Liza watched him with growing amusement as he watched his housekeeper lay out the saucers. Evidently he also felt this magnetic pull—and it rattled him.
“Well,” he said in something near to a mutter, meeting neither her nor his servant’s eyes. “I will leave you to take your tea in peace, Mrs. Chudderley—”
The housekeeper cut him a startled look.
Liza came to her feet. “Oh, no,” she said warmly as he turned away toward the door. “Please stay. I do so wish to learn more about my savior.”
For a moment it appeared he would ignore her and continue his striding escape. But then the housekeeper said, in tones of pure disbelief, “Sir?”
He stopped. His shoulders squared. When he turned, he was smiling, as though Liza’s interest suited him perfectly. “Of course,” he said pleasantly. He came back to sit across from her, that false smile still riding his lips.
Mr. Grey took his tea with no cream and two spoons of sugar. His eyes met hers over the rim of his cup, then flicked away as though hers burned.
Warmth prickled through her cheeks. The wild thought came to her to say to him: Yes, I feel it, too. Marvelous, isn’t it?
What a mortifying gaffe that would be! She gave herself an inward shake. She had rubbed shoulders with dukes and princes, and had no cause to be disconcerted into social blunders by a country doctor—no matter how handsome his forearms.
Clearing her throat, she said, “I’m not surprised that a man so charming as you should hail from a place north of here.” When he glanced at her, frowning the slightest bit, she offered her kindest, most encouraging smile. “There are so many lovely places in that
category—why, nearly the whole country, I believe. We are, after all, in Cornwall.”
His laughter sounded rusty and surprised. “So we are,” he said.
That was not a very helpful contribution to the conversation. Luckily for him, she felt patient. “Must I guess, then, which part of our lovely north was blessed by your birth?”
“The coldest part,” he said.
The housekeeper was looking back and forth between them as though watching a tennis match. Liza could not much blame her. Mr. Grey’s elliptical replies verged on a spectacle. The dear heart was shy! “So you come to Cornwall for the warmth,” she said.
“For the peace and quiet, in fact.” His eyes slipped down her body, returning to her face so quickly that she might have imagined it. But she hadn’t. Her skin burned where his gaze had wandered.
He was very aware of her as a woman. And he did not like it.
Her answering disappointment seemed to scrape along the raw wound opened by Nello’s betrayal. She had all the patience in the world for shyness, but no tolerance whatsoever for moralizing curmudgeons. She had vowed it over her late husband’s grave: she would never again apologize for herself to any man.
Tucking back her shoulders and arching her spine the smallest amount, she leaned forward. Granted, this formal gown was not suited to nuncheon teas, but it certainly displayed her bosom most admirably. “I hope I have not disrupted your peace too terribly, then.”
Now his eyes met and held hers with a steadiness that caused a little shock of warmth to explode in her stomach. He knew exactly what she was doing. “I expect I shall recover shortly,” he murmured.
That frank, appraising look could not belong to a prude. Her pulse began to thrum again. “I must thank you for your ministrations with an invitation to dinner—tonight, if you’re free.” It was her social duty, after all, to welcome newcomers to the district.
“Alas,” he said, “I’ve a prior engagement at the vicarage.”
This news gave her brief pause. She was not certain she was prepared to flirt with a man who willingly consorted with men of God. Such an undertaking would no doubt be riddled with lectures.
But . . . one must take risks to win rewards. A pleasant distraction, a harmless flirtation, would be very welcome. “Tomorrow, then?”
For the brief space of a moment he merely looked at her. And then he gave her a strange, knowing smile that utilized only half his mouth. “Mrs. Chudderley. I think that would be unwise.”
She blinked. The answer was so unexpected—and, if interpreted in a particular way, so frankly impudent, as though he assumed that if he did come, he would have his way with her over the dessert course—that it briefly took her breath away.
His smile widened into a grin. “And now I’ve shocked you,” he said, and set his cup back into his saucer with a definitive click. “I am bad company, I confess it. This is precisely why I must decline your invitation: I should not like to ruin your good opinion of the north.”
He rose then and sketched a bow that belied his own words, for it spoke of polish and breeding, and an education in the niceties of society. But before she could point this out—and she might have done; he was intolerably blunt, which meant she might be blunt in reply—he had turned on his heel, throwing over his shoulder the discouraging: “Mrs. Brown will show you out, ma’am.”
And then he was gone, leaving her puzzled about whether she should be terribly offended, or determined to answer what surely must have been intended as a challenge. For nobody said no to her—especially not men who were considered bad company.
CHAPTER THREE
At the house, in the entry hall, the rap of the butler’s heels echoed off the marble dome high above. Undoubtedly it was a remonstrance to Liza that neither he nor the footman seemed surprised by her bedraggled state, her lack of cloak and hat and gloves, her seven hours’ absence, or her failure to have appeared at breakfast.
“Good morning, ma’am,” said Ronson. The butler’s voice was terribly bland as he clicked his heels together in a bow. His face, hatched by lines that grew deeper when he frowned, currently looked as though it had been carved with an axe. Dear Ronson did not approve of her. “I see that Miss Mather does not accompany you.”
Her secretary? “No, of course not.” Mather tended to disappear when the liquor came out—last night being no exception.
Liza took up her mail from the salver proffered by a footman. A dozen envelopes, many of them invitations forwarded from London. She had closed up the town house three weeks ago, after that disastrous meeting with her solicitors. Creditors knocking right and left . . . they all seemed to be in cahoots, for the crisis had manifested with such shocking suddenness. Her first instinct had been to flee to where she felt safest. Hide and regroup.
Now she had a new reason to stay away. In London, the beau monde would make a sport of watching her reactions as Nello courted his heiress beneath her nose. She could not go back to town. It would be a summer in the country for her.
She cleared her throat, breathing deeply to stave off a welling loneliness. It doesn’t matter. Let her have him. She knew how much his promises were worth. Oh, he’d been full of sweet words at the beginning. He had promised her everything—the moon, the stars, marriage, and everlasting love. And in the wake of her mother’s death, she’d been desperate to believe him.
But she’d also been too recently widowed, and too well educated in how quickly marriage could go wrong, to commit herself so quickly. Give me time, she’d begged him. A little time is all I need.
Thank God for that! For his motive had not been love, after all. No, what he’d been looking for was money.
She should probably do the same.
Her throat closed. What choice did she have? It wasn’t simply her own welfare that hung in the balance. Everyone who worked her land—though the value of their crops kept falling; everyone whom she employed—and the children whose educations she funded, and the parish, and the village school—
How could a handful of bad choices have sunk her so quickly? Her accountants had seemed amazed. Can it be that your solicitors never reviewed your late husband’s investments? But the solicitors said it had been the accountants’ duty to do so. For her own part, she might have kicked herself for assuming that such matters didn’t require her oversight. But really, what did she know of stocks and bonds?
The silence felt heavy. She glanced up. Ronson’s lifted brow screamed with significance. “Ah, yes,” she said. “You were speaking of Mather?”
“Indeed, ma’am. When Mrs. Hull could not account for your whereabouts at the breakfast table, Miss Mather went in search of you.”
Liza sighed. A hundred times she had chided Mather, but the girl had a gift for fretfulness: at the slimmest possibility of trouble, she was off like a dog on the scent of a bone. “I do wish you had stopped her, then. You knew I was fine.”
“Of course,” Ronson said blandly. “Shall I dispatch someone to locate her?”
“Yes, tell her I’m well. Though I—”
“Elizabeth!” A figure appeared at the top of the staircase, hands clasped dramatically to heart. Jane Hull was a fellow widow and new friend whom Liza had encountered when taking the water at Baden Baden. Oh, glorious winter! She’d been so innocent then of the troubles to come.
Clearing her throat, she made her voice bright. “Good morning,” she called. And the sight did cheer her. From this angle, Jane looked like a hovering angel, for as always she wore white, and her blond hair fell to her waist, unbound. A very winsome discovery. She would be great fun to introduce to everybody at the next party. Provided I’m invited, once the news breaks. She pushed that thought aside. “I hope you didn’t miss me too terribly last night.”
“Thank heaven you’re back safely!” Jane replied in a high, trembling voice.
A snort came from Ronson’s direction. Liza turned her smile on him, glad to see real life in his expression—but then he averted his face, the bulldog.
How absurd to feel wounded. He was only a servant, after all. She hiked up her chin and gave him her back.
Jane came rushing down the stairs to embrace her. “Did you find him?” she whispered into Liza’s ear. Her cheek was cool and smooth where it pressed against Liza’s, soft with youth, and she smelled unbearably wholesome: rose water, soap, and the lavender that the maids folded into the household laundry.
Conscious that she herself did not smell so sweetly, Liza pulled back—or attempted to; Jane would not permit it. “Come,” the girl said, clasping Liza’s waist and drawing her up the stairs. “Tell me all of it. Your maid says Mr. Nelson has left. Did you throw him out? Or”—Jane’s voice dropped, and a pretty pink stained her cheeks—“were you with him all night?”
Liza did worry about Jane’s ingenuous mannerisms. They would not be counted at all fashionable. “Neither,” she said. After their contretemps in the drawing room, Nello had left. Simply . . . walked out without so much as a backward look. So much for his heartbreak. Whatever beat in his chest, it was probably made of stone.
As for herself, she barely remembered her mad rush through the wood. Had she spent some time by the lake? Yes, that seemed right—staring at the moon and thinking of her mother as she wept, wretchedly and dreadfully, so that her throat, even now, seemed to ache in memory. And then . . . somehow she had found her way to Mr. Grey’s garden.
A shiver passed through her. Sometimes she frightened herself.
“What is it?” Jane asked as they crested the stairs. “The look on your face—”
Liza spoke quickly, for she did not wish to know about the look on her face. “In fact, I met a man.”
Instantly she regretted that confession, for the thought of the doctor triggered a physical throb, an echo of the attraction she had felt—which, in the cool, spacious elegance of her home, seemed all the stranger and embarrassing. A country doctor. Terribly dressed. Who had spurned her invitation to dinner!
“Oh!” Jane clapped. “Oh, do tell! Who? Is he in love with you already?”
That Scandalous Summer Page 4
