David was married. He’d never kept his vows as far as Maris knew. “Did Jane know? Did Henry?”
“Poor Janie did. I had to tell her why I couldn’t marry her, didn’t I? And look what happened. I know you hold me responsible, and I reckon I am. I never expected her to take her life. I supposed Uncle Henry would send her off to Italy or somewhere for the duration. But she was too terrified to tell him.”
And Maris had not noticed the change that had come over her friend. She would never forgive herself for it. “But Henry did not know of your marriage.”
“No. It was the one thing I managed to keep from him, but shutting Catherine up all these years was no easy task, I assure you. Your pin money made some little progress there. Odd isn’t it? Hush money from one wife to another. Your husband was like a badger digging into my affairs. He kept a list of all my indiscretions, and read it to me every time I turned up. Did you know that? Called on the carpet like an errant schoolboy every time I darkened his door. Needless to say, I didn’t like that.” David examined a cuff. “I might have said a few things to him to raise his hackles.”
Henry had been nearly apoplectic after his last face-to-face meeting with his nephew. “You threatened to destroy the Kelby Collection.”
David shrugged. “I admit I don’t care about it. Can’t understand why he was consumed with all that old rubbish. But I know my duty. As earl, everything needs to remain for the next generation.”
The next generation. Maris pushed her plate away and stood up, too agitated to sit still a minute longer. She walked to the window. Reyn had disappeared down the lane long ago. “You said this Catherine was pregnant when you married.”
“Ah, yes. I have a strapping son. He’s sixteen this year, I believe.”
A son. She turned to David, trying to keep her composure. “You don’t know how old he is?”
“Well, I can count as well as the next fellow. He’s mine, all right. His damned mother was a virgin and he was born nine months after the benighted night I first took her. We had quite the hot affair for the month I spent in the country. She met me every day, sneaking out of the parsonage like a little spy.” He leered, and Maris looked away. “There is nothing like leading a complete innocent astray, Maris, though I don’t expect you share my sentiments. I would imagine you believe yourself to be one of my victims, don’t you? Unlike you, Catherine couldn’t get enough of me then, but no more. We’ve always lived apart. She and I do not get on very well.”
Maris expected not. Who could close both eyes while one’s husband carried on affairs as if he wasn’t wed?
So Henry had another heir besides his feckless nephew. That knowledge might have done much to soothe his ambition for the title. If Henry had known, he would have offered Catherine and her son residency at Kelby Hall. How he would have loved to watch a boy grow up there!
“Somehow Catherine caught wind of Uncle Henry’s death. She’s been after me for months now to move to the ancestral pile and set herself up as countess and groom young Peter as the heir. I told her it was no use yet, that you might cut me out of the earldom with the brat in your belly. Quite frankly, at this point I wouldn’t mind if you bore a son and saved me the trouble of strangling the woman. She’s not aged well at all.”
Maris bit a lip to keep from laughing. To think of suave, smooth David Kelby trapped forever in a miserable marriage. While he might be a villain, she somehow couldn’t see David’s long white fingers around his wife’s throat. It would take too much effort.
“Tell Catherine I should like to meet her. Have her bring your son. Is he at school?”
“Who has the money for school fees? I can’t send him and support my tailor, too. His grandfather has been tutoring him in that godforsaken village they live in. Catherine brags he’s bright enough. There’s nothing else for him to do, but study. No amusements to be found whatsoever. That was rather the reason I got entangled with Catherine in the first place. I was visiting my old friend Montague and there she was, fifteen, all blushes and blond ringlets. A regular Eve. A viper in my garden is what she is now.”
He had debauched a fifteen-year-old girl. Who was the snake? “Poor David,” Maris said, with just a trace of mockery.
“Oh, I’m sure you feel I’ve gotten just what I deserve for all the trouble I’ve given you. It’s a pity Uncle Henry isn’t here to laugh at me.” David’s face shifted to its usual unpleasant expression. “I warn you, though, should you try to trick me and foist off some local milkmaid’s babe as your own son, I’ll know. I’ll be watching. So, I imagine, will Catherine. Nothing is going to deprive her of seeing her child in his rightful place at last.”
“Goodness. I’m quaking.” And Maris was. With repressed laughter. The solution to her current agony was plain as the sneer on David’s face. A reprieve for her ever-present conscience. But before she made an irrevocable decision, she must meet with Mrs. Catherine Kelby and her son.
Maris wouldn’t say anything to Reyn. Not yet. But after last night, the thought of living her life without him in it was impossible. What did she care if she caused a frightful scandal? There would be a new Countess of Kelby, a new heir. At the rate David was going, he was bound to be shot soon by a jealous husband or contract one of the inevitable diseases that ran rampant throughout society for men with his proclivities. Even if he lived a long life and was an unsatisfactory earl, he had a son who might be worthy.
“What is Peter like?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.” Despite David’s blasé tone, the tips of his ears turned red.
“You don’t know your own son?” Maris asked, aghast.
“You can’t expect me to bury myself in the country to chat up a pimple-faced boy. I saw him a few years ago and he didn’t have two words to say for himself. His mother is probably lying when she says he’s intelligent. I saw no evidence of it myself.”
Poor Peter. But maybe not. No one would think David Kelby to be a good influence on a young man. Perhaps it was a mercy he lived out of the way with his mother and grandfather.
“Anyway, you can judge for yourself. Catherine should arrive at Kelby Hall any day now. I tried to stop her to no avail. She thinks your pregnancy is some sort of trick I’ve used to fob her off, but one look at you should shut her up. Unless you’ve got a pillow stuffed under your dress and got that idiot Crandall to lie for you. Do you know he had the gall to accuse me of having something to do with Uncle Henry’s death? Just because I was visiting a friend at the Hall the night he died.”
“A female friend, I presume.” His spy.
“Jealous?” David waggled an auburn brow. “We did have some good times, didn’t we, my dear? Though you lost your nerve after so brief a time. I never did get to teach you a fraction of what a woman needs to know to please a man. I wonder how you managed to entice my old uncle back into your bed. It was my understanding he was quite beyond performing his husbandly duties.”
Maris stood straighter. “Your informant was incorrect, David.”
“Was she? I wonder. Maybe you had a fling with the gardener or a footman, perhaps even with Uncle’s permission. I wouldn’t put anything past the old boy to cut me out. He might even have watched from the sidelines.”
“David! You are disgusting!”
He was getting dangerously close to the truth, but he could have no way of knowing.
“So my wife tells me every chance she gets, which, thank God, is not often. I will arrange to send her here when she darkens Kelby Hall’s door. As for myself, I’m bound for London this day. The Season, you know. There might be some pretty girls to lure into the bushes. An earldom is so very useful to throw a bit of added glitter into the mix. The mamas have such hopes for their daughters when they see me coming.”
He was delusional. At almost thirty-eight, he was showing the years of dissipation. His dark red hair was graying, his mouth bracketed by deep lines, his middle a bit thicker than she remembered. Once, Maris had thought him handsome, but she’d realized too late tha
t his charm had ever been false.
“Happy hunting, then,” she said lightly. “How disappointed they will be to discover you have a wife and child tucked away.”
“There’s no reason yet for anyone to know. If I’m lucky, Catherine’s coach will tumble down a ravine and I’ll be a grieving widower. Oh, don’t look at me like that! Murder is not my style, Maris, else I should have snuffed out Uncle Henry years ago.”
“How reassuring.” Maris went to the bellpull and Aloysius appeared instantly. “Please see my nephew-in-law out, Aloysius.”
The young footman gave David a dark look. “With the greatest of pleasure, my lady.”
David threw back his head and laughed. “Such fierce loyalty. I’m gone. For now. But you have not seen the last of me.”
Maris collapsed in her chair once he was on his way. It might not be long before she was perfectly safe from him. If she weren’t afraid of being able to get up without assistance, she might even get down on her knees and pray.
Chapter 30
June 1821
Reyn was bent over one of the ledgers scratching in information. It had been difficult to settle down to work at his desk, remembering what had occurred on his office floor a week ago. All he could see in his mind’s eye was Maris, her head over him, lovely lips on his cock, her dark lashes fluttering as she took him as deep as she dared.
It had been heaven, and now it was hell. He’d heard nothing from her since he left her with that bounder David. Maris had sent Ginny a proper thank-you note for her hospitality the next day, but there was no secret message therein for Reyn. He had not been able to stop himself from riding to the copse of trees every day, sometimes twice. There had been no token from her tied on a tree branch, no letter professing her love tucked into a hollow, no schedule when he might expect to be schooled by the woman, Miss Holley. He had checked, mooning about in the grass until he felt like a complete fool.
Mr. Swift had seen her, however, and by the time he’d arrived after Reyn sent him, David Kelby had gone. Left for London, in fact. At least Maris wasn’t being tormented by the man.
Until his next visit.
Blast. There must be something he could do to protect her from Kelby. Reyn threw the pen down, splattering ink across the pages. He looked down as his work-roughened hands, curling his fingers into his palms, raising the thumbs and turning them until his knuckles met. b was on the left and d was on the right—or was it the other way around? It was hopeless.
He might have stared at his hands indefinitely except he heard the knock on his office door. Hurriedly he closed the ledger. “Come.”
It was young Jack, bearing a crisp white piece of stationery, folded but unsealed. Double blast.
“What have you got there?”
“A message from Hazel Grange, Captain. One of the footmen brought it. Said he couldn’t stay but a second to deliver it. Had to get to the village before something else happened.”
Reyn’s throat dried. It was much too soon for the baby. “Something else happened? He didn’t say what?”
“No, sir. In a right tizzy he was. Road off like his life depended upon it. Aren’t you going to read it?”
The pristine paper bore Jack’s smudged thumbprint. Reyn opened it and struggled to read it. To him, it looked like You hab detter come at once. The Countess neebs you. A.
Reyn ran the words through his head, translating what he saw into what was meant. “Aloysius brought this?”
“He didn’t say his name, sir. He was just a footman. But he wasn’t wearing a fancy white wig or even a bit of braid,” Jack sniffed, dismissive.
“Saddle up Brutus for me.”
“That devil?”
“Aye, that devil. Do as you’re told, sharp.” Reyn ran an inky hand through his long hair. Maris would have to take him as she found him. If she was in trouble, she wouldn’t care if his hair was unkempt and his tie entirely absent. He rolled his sleeves down, grabbed his old tweed jacket from the back of the chair, and went to help Jack with the tack.
Jack said Aloysius had taken the road, but Reyn rode over the fields hell for leather. When he spotted Hazel Grange over the ridge, all seemed normal. Pastoral. A lazy curl of smoke came from the kitchen chimney. Windows gleamed in the bright June sunshine. Urns of pale pink geraniums flanked the columned portico. The house looked like a gentlewoman’s home, and Reyn in his present state was unfit to enter it through the front door.
No matter. He rode around to the kitchen, Stephen Prall huffing to keep up with him and take Brutus’s reins.
“Is the Countess well?” Reyn asked as he dismounted. “I received a message.”
The man’s eyebrows knit. “Far as I know, sir. They’ll know more in the house.”
Reyn entered the kitchen, much to the alarm of the ladies present. They seemed to be assembling a towering tea tray with dozens of little treats, reminding Reyn that he’d been too busy to eat breakfast or lunch. “Good day. I’ve come to speak to Aloysius. Is he about?”
The maids looked to Margaret, Maris’s housekeeper. “I believe he’s gone on an errand, Captain Durant,” she said.
“Yes, to fetch me,” Reyn said, trying to smile. “Do you know what it’s about? His note indicated it was urgent.”
“Well, I don’t know as I would call it urgent, but I’m glad you are here, and that’s a fact. My lady has guests.”
“Guests?”
“Aye. A person who claims she is the Countess of Kelby, who seems to think this house should be hers. And a boy. Poor lamb to have such a mother.”
Not David Kelby, then. Reyn allowed himself to relax a fraction. “Has Mr. Woodley been sent for?”
Reyn had had a very discreet dealing with the old earl’s solicitor. The emerald was not his only payment for his brief time at Kelby Hall. Woodley professed he did not know the details of the private arrangement Reyn had entered into with Henry Kelby, but had paid him in full.
“Aye. Aloysius was riding into Shere after he went to Merrywood to get word to him by post. But who knows when Mr. Woodley will get here with the proper papers?”
“Perhaps I can help. This woman is not mad, is she? Dangerous?”
“She hasn’t whipped out a pistol. But she’s making quite a fuss. In her delicate condition, the poor countess should not be bothered.” Margaret blushed, recognizing that to discuss such a thing with a strange-ish man was not done.
“I’ll just follow you in with the tea tray, shall I?”
“Hold still.” In for a penny, in for a pound. As long as Margaret had begun to walk on the edge of impropriety, she smoothed Reyn’s windblown hair down and handed him a linen napkin to wipe the sweat off his face. “You’ll do, I suppose.”
“Thank you, madam.”
Who was the guest of Maris’s who thought she could move into Hazel Grange? Something very odd was afoot. He followed Margaret and one of the maids up a short flight of stairs to the main floor. Maris’s parlor door was open, and a woman’s voice immediately grated on his ears.
“If I cannot have Kelby Hall yet, I see no reason why Peter and I shall not have this house.”
“Mrs. Kelby,” Maris said patiently, then broke off as Reyn and the servants entered the room. She rose in an instant. “Captain! This is a most unexpected visit.”
Reyn went to her and kissed her hand, something he’d not done in this sort of context. There was no secret squeeze or sweep of his tongue. “Lady Kelby, please forgive me in all my dirt. I was just passing, and remembered you wished to discuss the renovations of your stable block as soon as possible. Have I come at a difficult time?”
“Oh, no. You are always welcome. That is to say, I know how valuable your time is. If you could join us for tea, I’m sure we can discuss it once my guest and her son leave.”
Reyn glanced at the other inhabitants of the room. A youth had risen at his entry, a lad of no more than fifteen or sixteen whose plump cheeks had not yet seen a razor. Though he’d not lost his puppy fat, the boy was ta
ll, with a mop of auburn hair and dark eyes. There was something about him that was vaguely familiar.
His mother remained seated. She was a faded blonde with a great deal too many curls for a woman her age, and possessed of an unremarkable figure. Her blue eyes settled on him with shrewdness. He felt a little like a chop in a butcher shop window.
“And who is this, Maris?”
Reyn saw Maris flinch at the use of her Christian name. “May I present my neighbor, Captain Reynold Durant? Captain, this is my niece-in-law, Mrs. Kelby and her son, Peter. My husband’s nephew David’s wife and son. My, what a mouthful that is.”
Reyn felt the room shift. “How very happy I am to meet you,” he said blandly. He found a seat before he fell into it. “I was not aware Mr. Kelby was married.”
“Do you know my husband?” From her tone, it was clear that any friend of David’s was an enemy.
“A passing acquaintance only. I met him at Kelby Hall when I was doing some work for the late earl.”
“What kind of work was that? Stable renovations? I saw no evidence of new construction when I was there.”
“Inventorying his antiquities collection. I regret to say I did not complete the task before the earl passed away. An opportunity arose to alter my career path, and so you find me the owner of Merrywood Farm. I raise horses.”
Though a trifle pale, Maris was pouring tea and passing plates as if she entertained David Kelby’s wife every day of the week. Reyn took a bracing gulp from his cup.
“Peter is horse-mad, aren’t you, darling?” The boy blushed as he bit into his seed cake. “We haven’t been able to afford a suitable mount for him, but all that will change now that David will be earl. God willing. No offense to you, Maris, but you must realize we pray for the delivery of a healthy girl.”
“Mrs. Kelby—Catherine—I do hope your wishes will come true,” Maris said, her voice soft.
“Well, I’m due something after the way David has treated me. Treated us,” she said as her son’s blush darkened. “And if my hopes are dashed, I can always move here. It’s nothing to Kelby Hall, of course, but better than the rectory, isn’t it, Peter? My father is a man of the cloth,” she added for Reyn’s benefit. “No doubt he’d miss us, but it is past time we had property of our own.”
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