‘Oh, indeed! What is to become of us? When I recall some of the things I’ve said and done to Mr Greaves, who is not a “mister” at all, but master of Blenhem Hill! I declare, when he confirmed that fact, I feared for a moment I might swoon!’
Joanna could readily understand the lady’s reaction. Before she could reply, Mrs Winston continued, ‘Of course, he always did have that air of quality about him. But his manners was so easy and unassuming, I just never imagined…Dear me, how many times I must have insulted him, teasing and joking with him as if I were his equal! Myles, too! Oh, I just know he shall turn us all off without a character for our effrontery!’ Had the housekeeper not needed to clutch at the rail to keep her seat in the bouncing gig, Joanna thought the woman would have wrung her hands.
She, too, had treated him as an equal, Joanna thought grimly. Nay, worse—as a ‘gentleman’s widow’ she’d sometimes even fancied herself above him. As recently as yesterday, she recalled now with chagrin, she’d wondered if, so reticent he’d been to talk about his family, he might be illegitimate!
She cringed now at the thought, her fingers jerking at the reins and making the horse shy. Humiliation washing through her, she quickly controlled him.
But worse was to come. Looking up at her suddenly, Mrs Winston said, ‘You didn’t know, either—did you?’
‘No,’ she confessed through clenched teeth.
The housekeeper put a sympathetic hand on her arm. ‘Oh, you poor dear. Mine is nothing to the shock you must have suffered!’
Her blush deepening, feeling ill all over again, Joanna recalled Myles’s knowing wink, Mrs Winston’s arch remarks when she’d come down to breakfast yesterday, all dreamy-eyed, her infatuation obvious to anyone in the household to witness. How she wished now she had behaved with more discretion!
Would they all now think her a nobleman’s doxy?
How ironic, she thought bitterly, to have run half the length of England only to willingly become what she’d fled Selbourne Abbey to escape!
And so it continued until they reached Blenhem manor, the housekeeper recalling and lamenting each idle word or careless action to which Sir Edward might have taken offence. Too sick and weary to try to either reassure the woman or attempt to give her thoughts a different, more cheerful direction, Joanna simply endured the chatter, adding no more to the conversation than an occasional non-committal murmur.
She had a pounding head as well as a queasy stomach by the time they finally reached Blenhem, where she thankfully dropped off her passenger before turning the gig over to a groom. Swiftly, before news of the shocking developments in Hazelwick could be spread to the servants who’d remained at the manor, she hurried to her chamber and locked the door.
For the next few minutes, she simply gave in to the violence of the emotions she’d been restraining since the news had first been revealed. Throwing herself on the bed, she wept with humiliation, disappointment and grief for the loss of the dream that, the facts now indicated, had been impossible from the beginning.
At length, the storm of emotion passed. After drying her eyes, she went to sit at her desk.
Weeping accomplished nothing. What was she to do?
Her heart argued that ‘Sir Edward’ was the same ‘Ned’ she’d grown to know and love. That before condemning him for misleading, lying to and betraying her, she must allow him to explain the reasons behind the vast deception he’d perpetrated upon everyone at Blenhem Hill.
But memories, other bleaker memories, crowded in, telling her the reasons behind his actions didn’t change the fact that the revelation of his true station in life upset the whole balance of the relationship she thought they’d established. She had memories far more extensive than those of Mrs Winston of times she had joked with him, teased him, treated him with a familiarity she would never have considered had she been aware she was addressing not a fellow estate employee, but its owner.
Indeed, she most probably would have left Blenhem Hill the day after her midnight arrival had she known the man who’d received her was ‘Sir Edward’ rather than estate manager Ned Greaves. She recalled the cold look of dislike on his features the moment they met. The dismaying thought struck her that it could very well have been Sir Edward, rather than her cousin Lord Englemere, who had discharged her brother!
Another wave of memories flooded her—all the times she’d argued with him about the venality of the government, of the ruling class and the aristocracy in general. She understood now why he had said so little in reply. Why he’d told her next to nothing about his childhood, upbringing, background.
Even worse, though she discounted Barksdale’s contention that he’d come among them to play the spy, though she could understand why he would want to discover the reason behind the attack on his carriage, by deceiving everyone at Blenhem, he had taken advantage of the trust he’d established with the tenantry to lure them into revealing information that might well lead to severe legal repercussions. The law, as Barksdale rightly alleged, was inflexible when it came to attacks on the aristocracy and their property, punishment for such offences being swift and severe.
No, whatever relationship she thought had developed between herself and Ned Greaves was as artificial and false as the name and occupation he’d given her the night they had met.
She must leave. Though she was but a servant, the long-engrained habits of her genteel upbringing argued that it wasn’t proper for her to live in the same house with him. It never had been, had she only known it.
But even as she thought about it, a protest against leaving him rose up from the depths of her being. She had known such joy this past month, found a happiness she’d never expected to experience again. She’d contentedly envisioned making Blenhem her permanent home, helping the children of the tenants, making a success of the school, assisting Davie towards a promising future.
She felt another pang. With Sir Edward as his patron, the talented boy she’d come to look upon as a sort of son didn’t need her. The Baron could easily find the boy a much more qualified tutor, and with his connections among the aristocracy, could do far more for Davie than she could ever manage. She was grateful for that, at least.
But as she waded through the muddy bog of love and humiliation, anger and pain, a sense of betrayal and her anguish over it, an even more dismaying realisation surfaced.
Despite all that had happened today, she still wanted him. Part of her reluctance to leave, she knew, was based on the urgings of desire. It seemed her body, awakened anew to pleasure and greedy for more of it, was deaf both to reason and shame.
Knowing now who he really was, she was reasonably sure what question he had intended to ask her. It did her self-esteem little good to recall how humiliatingly easy she had made it for him to ask. Hadn’t she been throwing herself at him, doing her best to tempt and seduce him, practically since her arrival? Small wonder if he thought her a plum ripe for the picking!
He wants you for more than just your body, her heart argued. What of the humour, tenderness, sense of purpose you shared? All of that was as real as your passion.
Was it real, cold reason replied—or had she only wanted to believe it so as to make the slaking of her desire more acceptable to her sense of honour? For if she were brutally honest, despite all she had learned today, if he returned this evening, persuasive and cajoling, soothing and gentling her with his touch—and then offered her carte blanche—she was not sure she’d be able to repulse him.
She must leave as soon as possible then, before the pleas of her heart and the demands of her body made her resolve waver. She would begin packing at once.
Fortunately, she reflected with gallows humour, she hadn’t yet accumulated many belongings. A shattered heart and broken trust wouldn’t take up much space in a trunk.
She had set out her few things on her bed, ready to place in a box she would borrow from Mrs Winston, when a knock sounded at the door.
‘Mrs Merrill—Joanna.’
She froze, as
Ned’s—no, Sir Edward’s—voice penetrated the study oak panel. The voice that had cried her name as she pleasured him, urged her to the brink as he plied his manhood between her legs, whispered sweet treacherous words of love in her ear as she lay spent on his chest.
‘Joanna, won’t you come out, please? I must talk to you.’
Chapter Twenty
N ever in his life had Ned burned with such a need to do violence to another person as he had when, with agony in his breast, he had turned from watching Joanna bolt from the hearing room after giving her testimony, to see Barksdale smirking in satisfaction.
He’d clenched his hands on the chair back, struggling to hold the white-hot fire of rage fettered inside. To keep his hands from reaching for the throat of the man who’d casually, cruelly struck him what the villain knew was the most cutting blow he could deliver.Only the perseverance developed through years of riding through icy rain, enduring the blazing heat of summer and the twenty-hour days of harvest, putting his own needs aside so as to tend first to duty, carried him through the rest of the proceedings. Though after the damning testimony of a dozen witnesses, the magistrate had no hesitation in binding Barksdale over for trial, Ned still had work remaining, for as that villain predicted, the allegations linking other men to the sedition he’d preached in these dangerous times was taken very seriously.
To the credit of the soldier’s honour, if not his discretion, Sergeant Russell had not contested Barksdale’s accusations. Though he contended he had never participated in violence, he admitted he had carried messages for the group meeting at the Hart and Hare. The others had also freely confessed to their connections.
Ned had attempted to argue with the magistrate for leniency, but he’d been cut short. With one curt pronouncement, the official bound over for trial Sergeant Russell and all the other men alleged to have participated in the group, leaving the very real possibility some of them might be transported, if not hanged.
He would have to get Nicky to summon all his influence in Parliament and on the bench to avert that. There were times, he thought grimly, when being an aristocrat, even a minor one, had its benefits.
Probably not, however, according to Joanna. At the very first moment he could get away, he’d left the hearing for Blenhem, urging his horse to a gallop in his urgency to address the imperative that had consumed his heart since the moment Barksdale had revealed his name: persuading Joanna Merrill not to despise and reject him for deceiving her.
Hand still resting against the panel of her chamber door, he told himself that surely she’d at least hear him out. But as second after second ticked away and she made no reply to his appeal, fatigue and anguish filling him, he laid his head in defeat against the door frame. He was trying to decide whether or not to invade her room by force when, after a soft click, the door opened.
With reddened eyes that spoke of weeping, she flicked him the briefest of glances, as if she couldn’t bear to look upon him. Pain scoured him at her distress while despair plunged his heart to his boot tips at her stiff, affronted stance and the cold disdain of her expression.
So she despised him now—not without cause. But he would never give up Joanna, his Joanna, without a fight.
‘You will accompany me to the study?’ he asked.
She swallowed hard and blinked back a tear—making him feel, if possible, even worse. ‘I would rather not, but I suppose, to be fair, I should at least let you speak.’
Overwhelmingly grateful to be accorded that much, he stood aside to let her pass. He ached anew at how careful she was not to touch him as she walked by.
Still avoiding his gaze, she took a seat in the study, in a wing chair near the fire, across the room from her usual place on the sofa. ‘Say what you will.’
In a few rapid sentences, Ned related what had happened on the way to Blenhem Hill, his concerns about the future of the estate and the tenantry and why he’d decided on subterfuge.
After he finished, she nodded politely, as if he had just offered her a proof in geometry. ‘I agree it was necessary to uncover the villains responsible for the attack and the leader trying to tempt men into lawbreaking. But after we were better acquainted, why could you not have told me the truth and confided your purpose to me? Surely you couldn’t think I had a part in such plans?’
‘I wasn’t sure at first,’ he admitted. ‘Your brother had just been discharged—not by me,’ he added hastily, ‘under less than ideal circumstances. I thought you might be part of some scheme to get him reinstated. Your actions soon convinced me otherwise. But from the sentiments you expressed about the wrongs done to men like Jesse Russell, I thought it possible you might be sympathetic to the reformers’ cause.’
‘You thought me capable of supporting lawbreakers?’ she asked angrily. ‘I see I was mistaken in believing that friendship and trust had developed between us!’
‘No, you are not!’ he quickly countered. ‘Trust, friendship—and affection—did develop. From very early on, I never doubted your good sense and good faith. Especially not after you told me about Hampton’s visit and revealed your misgivings about him and the unrest here. After that, I was only concerned that you be kept out of whatever was going on. Kept safe. You are by nature open and honest, a stranger to subterfuge. If Hampton or Russell had come by seeking news, I didn’t want you to possess knowledge you might have to hide, information that, if revealed, might place you in danger.’
‘I fell into danger anyway, not knowing,’ she pointed out.
He’d suffered qualms of conscience about that himself. ‘Along with having to deceive you, having inadvertently jeopardised your safety is my greatest regret. But surely you cannot doubt that what I feel for you, what we shared, is genuine! After we came together two nights ago—’
She thrust out her hand, cutting him off. ‘Please, do not speak of that!’
‘But I must speak of it. I love you, Joanna. I want you in my life, permanently. I want to marry you—’
‘No! she cried, leaping to her feet, tears dripping down her cheeks. ‘Don’t you dare tell me that! Not now. Not when you know how easy it would be to tempt me with caresses, to lure me into coming back to your bed again and again with sweet promises of calling the banns the next week or the next, until all the world knows I’m a kept woman and ’tis no longer necessary to ply me with false promises.’
Horrified, Ned said, ‘You think I would betray you so?’
She gave him a long, level look. ‘Again, you mean?’
He wanted to hotly protest…but he had deceived her. Originally he had not trusted her enough to tell her the truth; later, he’d refrained from divulging it in a probably misguided attempt to safeguard her and the progress of the investigation. Those excuses sounded hollow now even in his own ears.
‘Do you truly believe everything we shared was false, then?’ he asked quietly.
‘Yes. No—oh, I don’t know! I don’t know you or myself now.’
‘But you do know me,’ he argued. ‘I’m the same man who worked on the school with you. Visited the tenants to urge that their children attend it. The friend you spent hours with every evening discussing every topic under the sun. All that is different now is that you’ve discovered there’s a bit more to my name.’
‘Which makes more than a “bit” of difference! I thought we were partners—equals. That we met on common ground. You, perhaps minor gentry, like me, an estate agent, not an owner—’ She halted abruptly, her eyes widening. ‘One who purchased the property from Lord Englemere. But you didn’t just purchase it at market…You’ve known him many years, you said, and held him in high esteem. Damnation, he’s a close friend, isn’t he?’
Though he knew the answer would likely only further incense her, there was but one reply. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.
She sprang up and paced the room. ‘Oh, this gets better and better! How amusing you must have found it when I abused his character—and that of all aristocrats. No wonder you had so little to say in response!
Which makes my behaviour even more mortifying. How could you not see me as just a lightskirt, trying to tempt a wealthy man into soliciting her services!’
Knowing he deserved her anger, Ned would tolerate much, but not that. Springing to his feet himself, he cried, ‘It wasn’t like that! I gave myself in love to you, as you gave yourself to me! Skewer my character if you must, but I will not allow you to sully what we shared!’
Every muscle and nerve screamed at him to seize her and pull her into an embrace, let the harmony that melded them whenever their bodies touched reinforce the truth of his words. But doubtless realising his intent, she put both hands out to fend him off.
‘Don’t touch me! Oh, no more, I beg you!’ she cried, weeping openly now as she wrapped her hands protectively around her body. ‘I c-can’t bear it! I d-don’t know what to think about you—or me. I need t-time.’
She took a shuddering breath, visibly trying to regain control. ‘Time to determine if I can believe what you say now when you deceived me so totally before. To decide what to do next. And I cannot sort this all out with you hovering over me—all the household smirking, knowing you’ve been in my bed! I shall leave first thing tomorrow.’
As he opened his lips, trying to frame another protest, she added quietly, ‘I shall leave and you cannot stop me. Please, if you claim to love me at all, let me go in peace.’
Let her go? The very thought set his insides churning in panic. Her leaving was the last thing in the world he wanted. If she left, how would he ever convince her to give him a second chance?
Desperately he tried to come up with some other argument to stay her. ‘I can understand your imperative to leave the manor. But what of the school and its pupils? You made a promise to them. We could prepare separate quarters for you, near the school—’
‘No,’ she said flatly. ‘Of course I have a duty to the children. After I’ve determined what I mean to do, I shall return, at least until another school teacher can be found. But not before a cottage for my use can be readied, which, given my experience with the school, should take some weeks.’
From Waif to Gentleman's Wife Page 22
