Entering through the servants’ entrance, Connor crossed the kitchen courtyard. Around him, doors led to the boiler room, coal house, scullery, kitchen, and larder, though he chose the one to the housekeeper’s corridor. Passing the workroom and still room, he found what he sought in the office.
Or rather, whom.
“Mrs. Davies, may I have a word?”
The housekeeper looked up from her ledger without reaction or expression of surprise for his unexpected appearance. Setting her pen aside, she removed her spectacles. “Of course, my lord. How may I help you?”
“Well…I…” Connor cleared his throat, stifling the urge to shuffle his feet under her inscrutable gaze. With her severely styled, steely gray hair, pinched expression, and stiff black bombazine dress, she’d give the most terrifying schoolmarm reservations of misbehaving. “I came across a young lady at the stables a few minutes ago, a Mrs. Milbourne.”
Mrs. Davies waited, hands folded over her ledger.
“Quite tall with black hair.” He refrained from waxing poetic over the color of her eyes. “Wearing a crimson habit?”
“Have you a question, my lord?”
“I’m no’ a lord, Mrs. Davies.” He flicked his wrist and reverted to the matter at hand. “She said she’d been visiting the Grange.”
“And?”
“And I thought it odd.” His discomfiture gave way to irritation. “Odd given there is no one in residence that she might call upon. I considered that perhaps she might have come to visit wi’ ye.”
“There’s been no visitors to the Grange today, my lord.”
Connor rolled his eyes at the address. If he didn’t presume to have the measure of English humor by this point, he’d swear they all did it on purpose. “Ye’ve had nae visitors today?” he repeated in disbelief as he matched Mrs. Davies stalwart expression. “No’ a one?”
“Not a one, my lord.”
He didn’t bother to correct her address this time as he was too confused by her response. By the lass’s own admission, she’d called at the Grange today. As housekeeper, Mrs. Davies would surely be privy to the arrival and departure of any guests to the manor, whether that guest was there to visit her or the boot black. Connor would bet his last pence nothing got past this woman’s scrutiny. Which could only mean that, like the stablemen, the housekeeper was abetting Mrs. Milbourne and concealing her presence.
The question was: Why?
Holding her gaze a moment longer, he searched for any hint of dissemblance without success. Mrs. Davies had missed her calling. She’d make a fortune at the card tables.
Chapter 3
A bit of a hiccup has developed in my otherwise placid life.
His name is Connor MacKintosh.
~ from the diary of Piper Brudenall, June 1895
Late August 1895
Almost two months later
“‘We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, Oh, nothing!”’ Piper’s voice hitched at that last bit of dialogue before she cleared her throat and continued. “‘Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts—not to hurt others.’”
Closing her eyes, she paused in her reading to absorb the profundity of the words. It was as if she were reading about herself. All through her self-imposed exile, she’d put concentrated effort into presenting a sunny disposition to her friends at the Grange, and even to Jane when she was about. Hiding tears and fears, swallowing the loneliness that burgeoned within her during the long hours after her maid, Edith, retired to the manor each night.
Hiding from the world.
An abundance of caution had kept her safe and secure all this time. Moments when that good sense lapsed and she grew either too comfortable—as she’d been when Harry had spotted her in town—or too lonesome, were the only times when her secret had been put at risk. She’d maintained that wisdom all through the festivities surrounding her brother’s nuptials. But for that rash impulse that sent her to the church, she’d confined herself to her cottage lest one of the houseguests recognize her or ask about her. By the time the last guest had departed—or so she’d thought—the desperation for conversation and activity led to an injudicious haste in resuming her usual pursuits.
The news that they weren’t as guest-free as she’d assumed had sent Piper racing from the house and straight into said guest. Though she’d dithered upon seeing him, there’d been no choice other than to face him or rouse his curiosity to the point of discovery. If this Connor MacKintosh were to deduce who she was… If he guessed!
But he hadn’t.
It took most of her short, harried ride home that day for that truth to sink in. While he’d obviously recognized her from their initial meeting outside the church before Harry’s wedding—as she had him after that initial flash of trepidation—the Scotsman had accepted the false name she’d taken for herself without pause.
Having never met her as Phillipa Brudenall, he couldn’t identify her. If her brother were to mention her true name, no connection could be made to the alias she’d given.
“Piper?”
Unaware of the internal struggle Piper fought—she was rather proficient at hiding her true emotions—Jane fanned herself vigorously to counter the heat of the sultry late-August day. As far as she could see, not a single bead of sweat marred Jane’s pale skin. Sitting erect in her pink muslin day dress with her legs tucked tidily to the side, she angled her beribboned, broad-brimmed hat and festooned parasol to protect her from the sun, as if the shade of the tree they sat beneath were inadequate.
By contrast, Piper had tossed her plain straw hat aside and unfastened several buttons of her blouse. Knowing she wouldn’t venture beyond the Grange’s parkland today, she’d eschewed the black in deference to the weather, donning an ivory linen blouse and dark green skirt with a single petticoat. Despite those concessions, she was also compelled to fold back her skirts to let the breeze cool her ankles as she lay on her stomach reading aloud from George Eliot’s work. Despite her concessions, moisture clung to her lip and brow like a hot compress. Unfortunately, conditions at her cottage or at the Grange were no better, driving them out of doors.
“My apologies.” She cleared her throat and turned the page of the novel. “Let’s see. Chapter seven. ‘Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time at the Grange in these weeks, and the hindrance which courtship occasioned to the progress of his great work—’”
“How coincidental. Papa says the reason Mr. MacKintosh has not pursued a more vigorous courtship is because of his occupation here,” Jane confided quietly, still wafting her fan assiduously. “His ‘great work,’ as it were.”
Piper reread the short paragraph and lowered the book to gape up at her friend as the meaning of her words sank in. Along with it, a pang of envy rang with the force of an axe swung into a tree trunk.
When she’d fled Mr. MacKintosh at the stables—once her panic subsided and the mental alarms ceased ringing in her ears, that is—her wariness of the man had given way to remembrance. Since the moment they’d met at the church doors in June, he’d whispered relentlessly through her thoughts.
No, perhaps not precisely that exact moment. At the time, she’d been too nervous for the full impact of his magnificence to sink all the way in. Later that evening, when her nerves had calmed and the cheerful music of the wedding ball carried all the way from the manor to her cottage to set her thoughts in more pleasant directions, she’d wondered about him.
Connor MacKintosh. He’d introduced himself that day just as he had at the stables. His sister, the bride of the marquis. Naturally, he’d been at the reception, possibly danced with Jane—she hadn’t asked, though perhaps she should have—and had won the hearts of all the young ladies there with his charming, lopsided smile and mesmerizing green eyes. He’d sent her pulse dancing when he’d stared down at her at the
stables, as if she’d been whirled through a spirited polka.
Piper had reached her twentieth year without a beau of her own. A proper beau, that is. Without being courted and called upon. Without a single dance or turn around Hyde Park on a gentleman’s arm. There’d been nothing for her beyond a vicarious appreciation of Jane’s two Seasons.
True, she’d made her choices and wouldn’t take them back for all the gold in the Bank of London, however that didn’t mean that the longing for romance and tenderness didn’t beat in her heart. And along had come a man who didn’t know her, who she was…or who she was related to. His masculine beauty and silky brogue had prompted many an adventure into the play land of If Only in the days between the wedding and their second encounter at the stables.
Far more in the months since then.
A lump caught at the back of her throat. “Mr. MacKintosh is courting you?”
Jane rocked her head from side to side in a vague response. “Father has encouraged his suit, but even a generous dowry has not been enough to attract his notice. Odd for the eighth son of an earl, is it not? Papa says it’s merely due to his attention to the work being done here.”
A little knot of tension curled in Piper’s gut. “I thought you told me he was nothing more than another bored nobleman who talked nonsense?” A reminder of what her friend hadn’t liked about him. A friendly reminder, that was all.
“Talk of farming methods with a lady is nonsensical, is it not? Partaking of it on a regular basis is even more gauche. No one of good society would consider him if they could see him as we have here in the fields.” Jane gave a delicate shudder. “So rustic.”
Piper silently disagreed. That agrarian coarseness provided her a variety of reactions, none of them disdainful. While riding over the summer, she’d spotted him from a distance many times, clearing new fields with the cottagers. Not overseeing the work, rather in the middle of it like a common man.
The smoke rising from burning stumps and brush had provided clear signals of areas to avoid. Contrarily, she’d been drawn by them. Watching from afar as he labored, swinging an axe or hauling ropes and chains. Had she first met him thus, she would never have assumed him a nobleman. Tall and broad, sweaty and dirty. His sweat-dampened shirt hugged his broad chest, as his dark brown hair clung to his temples and cheekbones.
That he physically participated in the labor most nobles considered beneath them warranted a share of her respect.
Rustic must agree with her. What would Jane think if she knew Piper wielded a dust mop with regularity? She doubted her friend would consider any degree of boredom reason enough for the daughter of a marquis to toil thus. It was one of the few secrets between them.
“You wouldn’t consider him then?” Piper concluded. “If he were to pay his addresses, I mean?”
“Oh dear!” Jane shook her head with a huff of laughter. “He might labor like a field hand, but he is the brother of an earl and a handsome man, at that. I’ll be seeing my third Season soon enough. Mother insists I’m getting to the point where I cannot be fussy.”
Piper refrained from expressing her contrary opinion. She was of the mind that a bit of discernment saved a young miss woes aplenty.
Herself included.
“Why is it so terribly hot today? Last year the trees were nearly turning by this point,” Jane bemoaned, her thoughts apparently not as fixed on the previous subject as Piper’s.
“The days were too cool and damp with rain to sit outside like this.”
“Which is worse? Neither allows a lady to appear or feel her best.” Jane snapped her fan closed and climbed to her feet. “I think I’ll be off, Piper dear.”
Gloom settled, more weighty than the humid air. Piper rolled onto her back then shifted to sit, a plea for her friend to stay longer on her lips. Parliamentary sessions would resume the following week. Jane’s father had already returned to London to occupy his seat in the Commons. Jane and her mother would soon follow.
And Piper would be alone once more.
She shook her head. It did her no better to dwell on her issues than it did to bemoan them to her friends. They were aware enough without her harping about them. If she disguised her loneliness to assuage their worries for her…
Well, that passage from Middlemarch neatly explained the reason. Pride.
What an ugly thing it was.
For all that, she couldn’t stop herself. “Must you?”
With a sympathetic smile, Jane reached out and caught her hand. “I will suffer many things for you, unfortunately this heat tries even the devotion of the fiercest friendship, does it not?”
She was teasing. Piper knew it, though she couldn’t summon a smile of her own in turn. “We could go back to the house for some lemonade.”
“If I could bathe in it perhaps. Miss Martin says we’ll have rain tomorrow, which should bring some relief to the weather,” Jane said, referring to her governess. “As soon as I can circumvent Mother’s notice, I’ll send word. For now, I long for a bath before dinner.”
“We haven’t even finished the chapter.”
“Pish, we both know how it ends.”
Piper had read Middlemarch before. Long ago. When they were mere words on a page and not a personal revelation to her.
Glumly, she donned her hat and walked arm in arm with Jane from their shady spot on the western edge of the rose gardens. Dozens of narrow footpaths wove through the sparsely forested areas of the park. Clearings were positioned strategically for the greatest impact of design versus nature. Visitors would pause in awe as they came upon the random glades of grass marked by a rose garden here, an aviary there, or a folly draped in wisteria.
Those had been Harry’s mother’s additions to Dinton Grange. Her brother had painted an enviable picture with his stories of her kindness and grace. Piper always felt as if the sense of peace she found wandering these gardens was a reflection of Grace Milbourne Brudenall. They stretched to the western boundary of the estate where it met Meadowcroft. A low fence marked the line.
With a hug and a kiss farewell as they reached it, Jane climbed the fence without even a flash of an ankle and soon disappeared from sight. For Piper, it was like she was Alice standing on one side of the looking glass, imagining all the fun and amusement on the other side.
With a sigh, she spun away and headed back in the direction of her cottage, despair dragging at her steps. It would be December before her friend came back, unless Jane’s family visited during Parliament’s midsession break in October. With Mr. MacKintosh in residence, Piper had been forced to limit her usual pursuits at the Grange to those times when he was far afield.
She’d become quite an accomplished baker over the years and was a fair hand at dusting high places the more petite maids couldn’t easily reach. Despite their objections that a marquis’s daughter shouldn’t engage in manual labor, she discovered that the work kept her mind and hands busy. Moreover, almost any activity was far superior to long hours of boredom.
Boredom only fostered loneliness, and an overabundance of idle time recalled her fear.
Fear of discovery. Discovery that would lead to…
Piper stiffened and banished the thought before it could solidify into memory.
Perhaps if she donned her maid’s uniform, she could blend in with what noblemen typically saw as a faceless household staff. Perhaps—
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Milbourne.”
Chapter 4
I cannot marry him! I won’t! I care not a whit for what titles and tiaras can compensate for, regardless of what Mother has to say on the matter. There is nothing that could make being the viscount’s wife tolerable to me. I know Harry will agree once he arrives.
~ from the diary of Piper Brudenall, December 1892
Piper clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a decidedly unladylike squawk. The sound rivaled the cackle of the white-plumed birds her father had kept in the aviary when she was a child. She gaped up at Connor, inwardly torn in thirds. First
, by the panic that he’d managed to come upon her without her notice. Then, by the instinct to run from him.
Lastly, by the guilty pleasure of looking upon him.
He was easily the most breathtaking man she could recall meeting or even setting eyes on. Not that she’d met many. Before she’d fled London and the Season she’d anticipated with such innocent eagerness, she hadn’t the opportunity to meet many gentlemen as she wasn’t yet out in society. Most of the men here on the estate were either too young or much older than she, and she didn’t dare partake of the local society. Even so, Piper sensed Connor MacKintosh was handsome beyond the norm with his dark, unkempt locks tickling at bold cheekbones and a squared jaw darkened with whiskers.
“An encore visit to the Grange?”
Finding her tongue, she answered, “No, merely passing through. I trust there’s no problem with that?”
“No’ at all. ‘Tis a pleasant surprise to come upon ye here when ye’ve proven yerself to be a difficult woman to find.” He offered a smile.
“Have you tried?”
“Wi’ some subterfuge, aye,” he admitted without a hint of shame. “I’ve found that the direct mention of yer name garners either a blank stare or a door shut in my face. Why is that?”
Whatever stratagem he’d employed, by all accounts, he hadn’t applied concerted effort to a search. True, Bram brought word that Connor had inquired about her to both Mrs. Davies and Hilde after the incident at the stables. Yet, despite his claim, Jane had told her that he’d dined at Meadowcroft in the days following with others from neighboring estates and never questioned Jane’s mother about her. Nor had anyone at the Grange relayed any gossip to the effect.
If he had been on the hunt, he’d maneuvered with incredible subtlety.
To be fair, if she were to hunker down in her cottage until he left the Grange, there was a fair chance she’d never see him again. Built of stone, white-washed and covered with ivy, and topped with a thick thatched roof, the dwelling was tucked amid a copse of towering trees and low undergrowth of the forest to the east of the manor. Rambling bushes and wildflowers brought both color and concealment. The old gamekeeper’s cottage had long been the perfect camouflage for her.
A Question for the Ages (Questions for a Highlander Book 7) Page 4
