But Donovan had escaped that fate by taking swift leave of the country to fight against Napoleon in Portugal and Spain, the Peninsular War as good an excuse as any to keep him far away from England and Arundale Hall. Until he’d received a letter saying that the duke had died, and that Donovan must return home at once to settle important matters of the estate.
So he’d come, because he needed money. The devil take it, he needed money! If it was only himself he had to worry about, he’d leave this bloody house and never return, and on his way out the door tell Nigel, his disagreeable wife, and that damned Wilkins to hell with his inheritance if he had to wed to obtain it! Yet then he might never find Paloma, his personal funds nearly depleted in the search—
“I say, Donovan, that comment was uncalled for.”
Forcing down his anger, Donovan glanced at Nigel—at the strained expression on his face, at the hint of jowls developing around his jawline and the noticeable paunch around his middle. His brother, only one year his senior, looked much older than his twenty-eight years. “But true. It’s no secret that you’ve sired four bastards in Hampshire County while your beloved wife remains barren as a brick—”
“All right, old man, enough! At least you have a bloody choice, which was more than I was granted! Perhaps things might have been different…” Nigel didn’t finish, but rose abruptly from his desk to face his brother. “Father’s will stipulates that your bride must be a country-bred girl of good family—”
“I heard.”
“Not your sort of woman admittedly—”
“But bound to be a good breeder.”
“Exactly. Now, if you’re in agreement that we proceed, I’ll call Wilkins.”
It was all Donovan could do to force a nod, his anger rising as Nigel walked stiffly to the door.
A country-bred girl. Leave it to his father to make such a final ridiculous demand. Donovan had spent many a London Season evading just that sort of marriage-hungry miss as well as any scheming provincial mother eager to make her daughter a highly placed match.
In fact, he scorned the institution of marriage. It was a farce, a sham. Why would he ever want to wed after watching his parents’ marriage—another loveless arranged affair—grow colder by the year? Several of his friends had stumbled down that same wretched path while he’d been away at war, the damned fools marrying for purely mercenary reasons or caving in to family duty.
Good God, he was no blather-brained romantic, but didn’t anyone of his station marry for affection? What about shared interests or a common passion? How many times over a good bottle of brandy had he sworn that he’d rather remain a bachelor than have some unwanted marriage thrust upon him and his life become a hell on earth?
A cynical bachelor to boot. He’d long been convinced that the only happiness one could hope to find was well outside the bounds of matrimony. Nigel with his mistresses was perfect proof—along with their mother, who had created quite a scandal five years ago when she fled to Italy with the wealthy count who still shared her bed. Now Donovan was being sucked into the same miserable pit as everyone else he knew, and there didn’t seem to be a damned thing he could do about it…
“If you’re ready, Lord Donovan, we’ll continue.”
Donovan left the window, but he couldn’t sit. He paced back and forth across the library as Wilkins in his high-pitched tenor drone began to reread the will. Nigel simply sat slumped in his fine leather chair and looked glum.
“Does he have to go over all that again?” Donovan demanded, feeling more each moment like a caged beast with not even a faint hope of freedom. He came up beside Wilkins’s chair so suddenly that the little man jumped, sweat beading his pallid brow. “Show me what I have to sign, and let’s be done with it!”
“But—but, my lord, there’s the matter of the house in Cornwall—”
“What house in Cornwall?” Donovan looked to Nigel, who now appeared almost as uncomfortable as the solicitor.
“Father bought property in Cornwall a year or so after you left England. A tin mine there has been quite profitable for us.”
“Quite profitable,” parroted Wilkins.
Donovan glanced from one man to the other, an inkling rising like sour bile in his gut. “All right, a tin mine in Cornwall. What in blazes does this news have to do with me?”
“Simple, Donovan,” Nigel said with a small sigh. “The house and surrounding estate is yours outright once you’ve agreed to abide by Father’s will, while the substantial monetary portion of your inheritance and a fifty-one percent share in the mine—the controlling share, mind you—shall be yours once we see you properly wed.”
A heavy silence hung in the room once more, Donovan staring incredulously at his brother. “I’m to live in some godforsaken house on some godforsaken land in Cornwall?”
“It’s a handsome house, actually, Donovan—well, in need of a little repair, I’ll admit, but not anywhere as bad as you make it out to be.”
“Near the fishing village of Porthleven,” Wilkins chimed in, peeping over his spectacles. “Well, a small seaport, really. Quite a charming spot—”
“It could be on the bloody moon for all I care!” Donovan roared, his fist crashing down upon the desktop. “I thought I’d be given a town house in London at the very least. That’s where all those silly little country chits go to ogle prime marriage stock, isn’t it? Am I to find a wife or not?”
“That’s the very point of it, Donovan. Father was certain you’d be distracted in the city—all those bored Society wives looking for a discreet dalliance or some such amusement. Just the sort of woman you’ve always favored, and so you can see, far too much of a temptation. So Father decided that you should make your choice in Cornwall. The Season hasn’t quite begun, after all. If you leave soon, you might be able to catch some willing beauty still at home packing her trunks.”
“If I leave soon…” Donovan muttered to himself, feeling as if he had walked straight into a great yawning trap that had been meticulously prepared for him from the moment he’d last defied his father. Meeting Nigel’s eyes, he said in a dangerously low voice, “You knew I wouldn’t be able to refuse, didn’t you? So you’ve avoided your foul-smelling wife and enjoyed your damned mistresses, knowing that one day Father would have me exactly where he wanted—”
“Surely an officer’s infrequent pay hasn’t kept you in the style to which you’re accustomed,” Nigel cut in, his voice grown as low as Donovan’s. “Even when combined with the paltry allowance Father’s been sending you all these years. Face facts, Donovan. A man of your station needs money to live properly, or you might as well have been born a pauper. Marrying is a small price to pay for such security, wouldn’t you say?”
Donovan said nothing, thinking that his elder brother had learned well at his father’s side. Too well.
But Nigel didn’t know about Paloma, and Donovan planned to keep things that way. Nor did Nigel realize that Donovan cared absolutely nothing for security or the proper way in which a man of his station should live.
All he cared about was that he gained his inheritance so he could continue his search. And that somehow he would escape the trap that was fast closing in around him. He had only to think of a way…
“Father’s will meets with your approval, then?”
Donovan nodded grimly.
“Good. Wilkins has the agreement fully prepared. You’ve only to sign.”
Donovan did, then threw the pen upon the desk and strode for the door.
“I’ll have a carriage brought round for you first thing in the morning.” Nigel’s voice carried after him. “You should arrive in Cornwall within a few days—”
“I’m leaving now,” Donovan ground out without turning. “My horse suits me fine.”
“As you wish. I’ll send the servants I took the liberty of hiring for your household after you, then.”
Donovan stopped at that, and half spun to eye his brother narrowly. “You hired servants?”
“A b
utler, of course. Fine fellow named Ogden. He can double as your valet until you’ve a chance to hire your own man. A few others too. A cook, a housekeeper, just enough to get you started. A family agent has been living in the house and seeing after our business affairs, doing bookkeeping and the like, but he’ll have cleared out by the time you arrive.”
“Oh, yes, my lord, Henry Gilbert should have cleared out his things several days ago. No worries there,” Wilkins squeaked helpfully. “He’s taken a small residence just down the road if you have need of him.”
So Nigel and his bespectacled lapdog had seen to everything, Donovan thought, incensed. Even down to hiring servants—no, bloody spies. Paid to watch him. Paid to see that he honored his agreement.
Hell and damnation, he wouldn’t be surprised if the whole lot of them planned to troop into the master suite on his wedding night just to observe the proceedings!
“Wedding night…” Donovan said through gritted teeth, deciding he’d best leave before he began throwing things—starting with Wilkins.
“What was that, Donovan?”
Glaring at his brother, Donovan said not another word as he left the room and slammed the door behind him.
Chapter Three
“Estelle, no feeden that mongrel under the table now! I won’t have it, I tell ‘ee—Linette, have ‘ee a notion to eat your eggs while they’re nice an’ hot or is it your plan to just push them round your plate? An’ where’s Marguerite? Marguerite!”
“She’s still sitting in front of the mirror, Frances. Where else would she be?” Corisande answered as she hurried down the stairs and into the cozily warm kitchen where the Eastons’ long-suffering housekeeper stood shaking her head, her hands fisted at her thick waist.
“Front of the mirror, is she?” came the disapproving reply in a rustic Cornish accent as thick as clotted cream. Frances’s wrinkled face creased into a frown. “I’ve never seen a young girl, comely as that one or no, spend so much time fixen herself up for the day. ‘Tes wicked, I say, an’ her being the good parson’s daughter!”
“Well, if not wicked, at the very least it’s a sorry waste of time.” Thinking of how she’d bolted from bed upon waking and thrown on her clothes, barely taking a moment to run her fingers through her disheveled hair and wind it into a bun at her nape, Corisande added over her shoulder—good and loud enough for her fifteen-year-old sister to hear upstairs—“I imagine Marguerite will find herself scrubbing the breakfast dishes if she doesn’t come down soon, won’t she, Frances?”
“Ais, so she will, an’ this evening’s too,” the housekeeper agreed heartily as Corisande reached across the table for a piece of barley toast. In too much of a rush to sit down, she shot a warning look at her youngest sister as the impish nine-year-old tossed a bit of fried bacon to her panting mutt, Luther, then tried to cover her action with an all too engaging grin.
“Estelle…”
The grin faded, big hazel eyes pleading. “But he’s hungry, Corie. Just look at him, poor dog. All ribs and whiskers.”
Luther was a sight, Corisande agreed, a small wiry-haired creature of indeterminate breed who peered expectantly at her toast through a spiky fringe of gray hair. “Maybe so, but you heard Frances. You’re to listen to what she says—and Linette, since you’ve obviously no interest in your eggs, why don’t you fetch Marguerite?”
“You know she won’t come,” Linette answered with a matter-of-fact shrug. A thin, gangly child just turned twelve with the delicate features of their mother and the auburn hair all the Easton girls shared—well, except for Marguerite, whose locks bore a deeper hint of red—Linette pushed away her plate in disinterest. “Not until she’s brushed her hair two hundred strokes.”
“Well, she’ll find her hair’s soon to fall out of her head if she keeps on.” Frances shoved Linette’s plate right back in front of her. “An’ you eat now! Your papa will think I’m not feeden ‘ee proper—”
“Corie, I miss Lindsay.”
Linette’s soft statement couldn’t have brought the clamor in the kitchen to a more sudden halt. As Frances sighed and turned back to the hearth while Estelle’s expression fell, her whining hound momentarily forgotten, Corisande gazed thoughtfully at her younger sister.
“We all miss Lindsay, sweet. I can’t believe she’s been gone three days. It feels like forever.”
“Well, she’d be here right now, having breakfast with us and laughing and telling us wonderful stories, if only she hadn’t gone to London.” Linette raised her small pointed chin, her eyes filled with angry hurt. “Things will never be the same, you know. She might never come back.”
“And if she doesn’t, then it will be because she’s found something that makes her very, very happy. I can’t believe that wouldn’t please you, Linette—and you know what else I think would please you?”
Linette shook her head, her gloomy countenance clearly saying that she doubted anything would make her feel better.
“We’ll read her letters together, you and I—”
“And me!” chirped Estelle.
“Yes, and Marguerite, too, if she wants to join us. Lindsay said she’d write as often as she could—so it will be almost like she’s here with us, don’t you think?”
Linette’s nod was slow in coming, a grudging smile even slower, but Corisande could tell when she gave her a hug that Linette was somewhat mollified. Yet Linette’s face broke into a full-fledged grin when Marguerite suddenly swept down the stairs, only to stop dead in her tracks beside the kitchen table when she realized everyone was staring at her.
“What are you looking at, Linette Easton?” she demanded of the sister with whom she’d once spent so much time and who now seemed more a pest than anything else since Marguerite had turned the ripe old age of fifteen. Linette merely began to giggle, pointing at Marguerite’s head.
“I said what—”
“‘Tes your hair, girl,” Frances interrupted, looking quite pleased with herself as if to say “I told you so.” “You’ve brushed it so much that it’s standen on end an’ flying round your head! Any more an’ I swear you’d have found yourself gone bald altogether!”
Her pretty face reddening at the laughter bursting around her, Marguerite’s hands flew to her hair as she sought to smooth it down.
“Ais, there ‘ee go, now take a seat with your sisters an’ be quick! You’ve only got a few moments to eat before you’re due at the church school.”
Marguerite did as she was told, but not before yanking upon Linette’s braid as she passed her sister’s chair and deliberately stepping on Luther’s bony tail, which set the little dog to yelping. Estelle scrambled so fast to comfort him that she knocked her plate to the floor with a crash. As the kitchen erupted in squabbling and confusion, Frances’s voice rising once more above the unholy din, Corisande took a last bite of toast, downed half a cup of weak tepid tea, and fled down the hall.
Not surprisingly, the door to her father’s study remained closed, Joseph Easton so far removed from the daily workings of his daughters’ lives that such commotion rarely made him stir from his reading and sermon preparation. Corisande rapped on the door as she always did each morning, and had done since her mother died.
As always, there was no welcoming call for her to enter, which hurt, even if she should have long ago gotten used to her father’s unintentional neglect.
Everything had changed during those wretched few days eight years ago when the fever had struck the vicarage like a heavy gale. Corisande had suddenly been thrust by necessity into the role of virtual head of the household at the tender age of eleven, which had given her cares and responsibilities far beyond her years. Thank God Frances Hodge, a widow who’d lost her husband to a mine accident many years before, had agreed to come and help, working as their housekeeper more out of the goodness of her heart than for the paltry sum Corisande could afford to pay her.
And she’d stayed, bless her, Corisande thought as she opened the study door, Frances’s stern command for
Marguerite and Linette to cease their quarreling rivaling any general’s as it carried down the hall. Yet the debacle in the kitchen was forgotten as Corisande’s attention once more flew to the sole occupant of the small shuttered room. Her father sat at his desk with head bent and a book spread out before him, the flickering light of a candle falling like gilt mist upon his silvery hair.
Joseph Easton’s hair had turned white as Christmas snow shortly after his beloved wife’s death, his once broad shoulders long since sagging under an invisible burden, and his step the slow, uncertain shuffle of a man twice his age of forty-two. Thankfully his mind had remained unclouded, at least in matters of books and the Bible, and the pulpit still rang on Sundays with the power of the Word.
If not for that, he would surely have lost his parish. Along with his white hair had come an eccentric streak that had emptied the pews as if the devil himself stood grinning at the altar with his tail twitching and fork in hand—at least until the superstitious parishioners grew accustomed to their parson’s unintelligible mutterings, moonlit stints at gardening, and late-night visits to the graveyard.
Another quirk of character was that Joseph Easton preferred his study to remain shuttered like a cave, Corisande forever longing to throw open the windows to fresh air and sunlight. But she never did, respecting the strange, remote existence that her father’s life had become.
“Papa?”
He started, as always, her soft query jarring him out of his private world as surely as if she had shouted. For a moment, he seemed bewildered, then a fond smile came over his still handsome face.
“Ah, Corisande. Are you on your way?”
The same question, repeated too many times to remember, but even so the words warmed her heart. He uttered them so full of trust, for even in his unfortunate state did he know that Corisande had done everything she could to save his parish for him and keep a roof over their heads—paying visits to his flock as her mother had once done so selflessly, seeing that the church school and the parish poorhouse ran smoothly, attending to details of christenings, burials, and weddings and ensuring that the church register and parish accounts were properly kept.
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