An Unlikely Suitor

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘Careful, Miss Brabant! You will tumble into the water in a minute and then I shall be put to the trouble of fishing you out!’

  ‘Oh!’ Lavender stamped her foot. ‘Let go, you odious man! I do not want you, nor your estate, nor your title, and I am sorry I ever interfered to find your family for you! I wish I had left you to struggle in the shop!’

  Barney pulled her into his arms and before she could protest her lips were crushed beneath his in a kiss that drove all the remaining breath from her body. If her comment had been outrageous then she considered his behaviour to be no less so. When he let her go she wanted to berate him, but found that instead she needed to hold on to him to steady herself whilst the ground settled beneath her feet again and the stars stopped swinging in their courses. Barney did not seem to mind. He held her close and pressed his lips to her hair.

  ‘Come, Lavender, let us put this foolish quarrelling behind us! Say that you will marry me, now that I do at least have something to offer you…’

  Lavender could hear the smile in his voice. The press of his body against hers was infinitely distracting. She tried to clear her mind.

  ‘You may remember, sir, that when you asked me to marry you before, I was willing—happy—to do so, and no consideration of rank or station entered into the matter. So I would not wish to be influenced by them, now that your circumstances have changed. No, I am sorry, I will not marry you.’

  She felt Barney go still, then his arms loosened and he stepped back from her. The chill evening air wrapped round her, filling the space where his warmth had been.

  ‘Lavender, you know that my reluctance had nothing to do with my feelings and stemmed only from an awareness of the inequality of our situation—’

  Lavender backed away. ‘I know it. Yet I did not share your reluctance. I would have been happy to marry you and live on nothing in a cottage! I loved you enough to do so!’

  Barney grimaced. ‘Lavender, that is not fair! I was thinking only of you—the wretchedness of asking you to give everything up to marry me! Now I have so much more to offer—’

  ‘And I do not want it!’ Lavender said. ‘All I wanted was you, but that was not good enough for you! So now that you have so much more the answer is still no!’

  The tears came into her eyes and she dashed them away. ‘I understand your pride and your reluctance. You did not want to offer for me before, when you felt you had nothing. I even understand that you might feel angry to be indebted to me for finding your link to the Kentons, although truly I consider that the greatest thanklessness!’ Her voice was husky and she cleared her throat. ‘What you forget, sir, is that I too have my pride! All that I have ever done has been to help you, and I do not see why I should fall in with your plans now, just because it suits your purpose! So—no—I shall not marry you!’

  And once again she ran from him and did not look back.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘This is most unfortunate!’ Caroline sighed. It was the following morning and Lavender had just confessed to Caroline and Lewis that Barney had proposed again and she had still refused him.

  ‘You are an unconscionably stubborn girl, Lavender!’ Lewis said irritably. ‘I cannot think where you get it from! Surely you must see that Mr Hammond is trying to do what is right and has been doing so since the very beginning!’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Lavender knew she sounded petulant. ‘I wanted to marry Barney when he had nothing to his name, but he did not wish it then! Just because he will one day be Sir Barnabas—well, a fine fortune-hunter I shall appear if I suddenly turn around and say that I will take him after all!’

  ‘Well, that may be what people will say,’ Caroline said fairly, ‘but what does that matter? Surely the point is that you are in love with him, and that he loves you, and as such you would be foolish not to make a match of it!’

  Lavender turned her face away. ‘I do not wish to talk of it! I shall take my paints out and do some sketches for my book! I have no wish to stay here for your chiding, or to hear Julia going on about how the carriages are lined up outside Kenton Hall with all the eligible girls in the neighbourhood angling to be the next Lady Kenton!’

  Lewis laughed and Lavender thought him quite heartless. ‘I hear that Julia is to leave us soon, at any rate!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Poor Lady Leverstoke has passed away and I’ll wager Julia is coming out of her seclusion to snap up Charles Leverstoke before anyone else gets there first!’

  Caroline laughed. She put down the letter she was reading. ‘And Anne Covingham writes that she and Sir Freddie have relented of their opposition to Frances’s attachment to James Oliver, so matters there seem set fair! Now Lavender, if only you could settle your differences with Mr Hammond we may all be comfortable!’

  ‘I think you are both disgusting!’ Lavender snapped. ‘I am shocked that you seek to encourage me to marry just for material gain! I am going out!’

  And she stormed out of the room, leaving Lewis and Caroline looking at each other in amused resignation.

  Lavender did not feel much better when she returned to Hewly for luncheon to find that the house was empty and Lewis and Caroline were away visiting. The morning had not been at all as she had planned: She had been stung by nettles and had dropped her sketching book in a stream so that her carefully illustrated pictures of Herb Robert had run all over the page. Feeling cross-grained and irritable, she took luncheon alone and was just silently chewing a cold collation when there was a knock at the door and Rosie came in. She bobbed a curtsey.

  ‘Begging your pardon, Miss Lavender, but the carriage is here from Kenton Hall. There is a man with a message from Sir Thomas. He asks that you join him there immediately. It is a matter of extreme urgency, he says.’

  Lavender put down her fork. ‘A matter of urgency?’

  ‘So Sir Thomas’s servant says, ma’am. And he has sent the carriage especially—’

  Lavender frowned. After her last escapade she had no inclination to go travelling on a whim and letting herself open to Lewis and Caroline’s condemnation as a result. On the other hand, Sir Thomas was asking for her and the matter was evidently important enough that he had sent his carriage specially. She went over to the window and pulled back the drapes. Sure enough, a coach with the Kenton arms was standing beside the door and an ostler was holding the horses’ heads and talking to one of the Hewly grooms. Lavender let the curtain fall back into place.

  ‘Oh, very well. Tell the man I shall be ready in ten minutes.’

  She scribbled a quick note for Caroline and Lewis, making it crystal clear that the invitation had come from Sir Thomas and was no mad start of her own, then ran upstairs to wash her hands and fetch a fresh bonnet. Her lavender blue dress had a stain on it where she had knelt down to rescue her sketchbook from the stream, but she did not feel she had the time to change. As it was, the horses were scraping the gravel when she went outside, and they set off without further ado.

  It was only as they neared Kenton that Lavender was suddenly struck by the impropriety of her own actions. Last time she had been accompanied by Frances, which had been bad enough in its own way, but this time she had not even brought a maid with her. She was so accustomed to wandering about Hewly and Steep Wood at will that she seldom gave any thought to the danger she might be in, but now she wondered with a little stab of despair whether she would ever learn to go on as she ought. Her overwrought nerves prompted her to believe that the invitation might have been part of a kidnap plot, and she was just imagining all kinds of Gothic horrors when the carriage turned in at the gates of Kenton Hall and started up the drive.

  It was immediately clear that some kind of transformation had already begun to take place. Men had been working in the deer park, cutting the grass beneath the trees and weeding the drive, but on this drowsy afternoon the gardens were as silent as they had been the previous week. The carriage pulled up outside the main entrance and the groom respectfully held the door for Lavender to dismount. She looked around for Sir
Thomas, but it was his grandson whom she saw coming forward from the stables, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to show that he had been working when she arrived. Lavender stared.

  ‘You! But I thought—’

  The coach rolled off into the yard and Barney came forward to take Lavender’s hand.

  ‘Thank you for responding to my invitation so promptly, Miss Brabant!’

  Lavender blinked. ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I thought it was Sir Thomas who had sent the message—’

  Barney shrugged gracefully. ‘I fear my grandfather is from home at present and it was I who sent the summons in his name! An unchivalrous deception, but I feared you might refuse if you knew the invitation was from me!’

  He held the door for her and after a moment, Lavender followed him into the hall. Here, as outside, there were remarkable changes. The windows were open, letting in the cool autumn air, the furniture had been polished to a high gloss and all the curtains and carpets cleaned.

  ‘My grandfather felt it appropriate to have the house spring-cleaned, for all that it is autumn!’ Barney said, a little awkwardly.

  Lavender smiled. ‘Perhaps he felt that, despite the turning of the year, it was time for a fresh start?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps.’ Barney smiled back. ‘Would you like to see more?’

  Lavender agreed, a little hesitantly. She was curious as to why Barney had lured her to Kenton, but she found to her surprise that she did not resent it. Rather, a strange feeling of warmth had stolen over her when she had seen him coming forward to greet her. She was pleased to see him and she could not deny it. Everything had seemed wrong after their last quarrel, the balance of things quite upset, and she had had no idea how it could ever be put right again. She had been cross and bad-tempered without him but she did not want him to know that—at least, not quite yet.

  They admired the library, where the portraits were in the process of being cleaned, then strolled out through the terrace doors into the gardens. It was even quieter than before.

  ‘So your grandfather is away—but where are all the servants?’ Lavender asked, looking round. ‘There has been so much activity here that I quite expected to see them hard at their tasks!’

  Barney laughed. ‘I have given everyone the afternoon off! As you say, they have been working so hard that they deserve it!’

  ‘And you have been working hard too, by the looks of things!’ Lavender smiled. ‘Have you been staying here at Kenton?’

  ‘Yes, I have been staying with my grandfather—’ Barney still brought the phrase out hesitantly ‘—these three days past, and he has suggested that I move to Kenton Hall as soon as may be convenient. There is much for me to learn of the estate and the farms and—’ Barney broke off, shaking his head. ‘It still seems quite extraordinary!’

  ‘Do you like Sir Thomas?’ Lavender asked hesitantly. ‘When we met before you said that you did!’

  Barney gave her his sudden smile. ‘Oh, prodigiously! To tell the truth, I was not entirely happy about the discovery of my new situation—’ he slanted a look down at her ‘—which was one of the reasons why I was so ungrateful when you sprang the surprise of my inheritance on me! I had so many plans relating to my study of pharmacology and no wish to give them up…Anyway, Sir Thomas feels that need not signify and that I may continue my work at Kenton, so perhaps I shall achieve my ambition eventually and join the Royal Pharmaceutical Society! I confess it is a relief to think that it will not all be gentlemanly pursuits and that my work may feature somewhere!’

  Lavender laughed. ‘To think that so many people might envy you, sir, and that you secretly hanker for your experiments and your studies!’

  Barney pulled a face. ‘Disgraceful ingratitude, I know! But I had worked so hard and always wished to achieve success through my own merit!’

  ‘Which is admirable,’ Lavender conceded, ‘but it will not make you turn your back on your inheritance, I hope?’

  ‘No,’ Barney was smiling. ‘I would be foolish indeed not to see the benefits that that entails, and there is no point in struggling unnecessarily! Besides, Sir Thomas deserves better than that—having found a grandson so late in life he does not deserve to lose him twice!’

  Lavender blinked a little, ashamed of the tears that prickled her eyes. ‘I am so glad, for he is such a nice man!’ She smiled. ‘How has your uncle taken your good fortune?’

  Barney grinned. ‘Oh, he is well pleased! In fact I do believe he wishes it had all occurred sooner, and then he would have been on calling terms with Kenton Hall these five and twenty years past!’

  Lavender smiled to think how happy the social climbing Arthur Hammond would be now. To have a nephew connected with the landed gentry was more than he could ever have imagined.

  Barney took her hand. ‘Lavender, forgive me for bringing you here under false pretences, but I needed to speak to you in private. I have proposed to you on two occasions and have no intention of making a third declaration! I should tell you that I rode over to Hewly this morning and obtained your brother’s permission—a second time—to marry you, and that he and Mrs Brabant wished me the best of good luck against your stubborn nature! So I do not intend to beat about the bush! You are to marry me three weeks hence. Sir Thomas has arranged for the banns to be read here at Kenton and is delighted that there is to be a family wedding after so long a time. All it requires is your consent!’

  Lavender stared at him, affronted. She was not sure what rankled more, Lewis and Caroline’s perfidious betrayal or Barney’s high-handedness when she had expected a pretty proposal. She freed her hand from his and stepped back.

  ‘You presume a great deal, sir! How if I do not wish to be married?’

  ‘It makes no odds,’ Barney said implacably. ‘In the first place, you told me several weeks ago that you were in love with me, so I am no coxcomb to remind you of it! Secondly I do not believe that you wish to remain a spinster! That may well suit others, but it will not do for you! Come, Lavender, why do you not consent? You could live here at Kenton and still study your botany…You know you would like it…’

  Lavender did like the idea of it and it rankled with her to have to admit it. She turned her back on him and started to walk down the path towards the courtyard. She had no clear idea of where she was going but she hoped that Barney might come after her and follow his proposal up with a sweeter persuasion. She knew she was being stubborn and she was even more annoyed when Barney did not follow her to press ardent words of love on her, but sauntered along at some distance behind, whistling.

  Lavender began to feel a little foolish. She reached the stableyard, hoping that the carriage might be waiting and she could prevail upon one of the grooms to take her back to Hewly. However, there was no one about. She peered into a barn stacked high with hay, and turned to see Barney standing in the doorway and laughing at her.

  ‘Lavender, when will you stop running away? I told you that you are here at Kenton alone with me!’

  Lavender raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh surely, sir, you cannot mean to suggest that my reputation is in danger! It is lost already, if you recall—’

  ‘Ah yes…’ Barney smiled, moving closer. ‘So you are implying that you are already irreparably compromised by me and cannot fall any further! I think that a mistake—’

  Before Lavender could read his intention, he had taken hold of her wrist and pulled her down into the hay.

  ‘You suggested before that I had spent my time tumbling village girls in haystacks,’ Barney said. ‘Well, it was not true, but I am happy to remedy the situation now!’ He rolled Lavender over on to her back and pinned her down in the hay.

  ‘Let me up!’ Lavender cried, sneezing as the hay tickled her nose. ‘This is absurd, sir—’

  ‘Then agree to marry me!’

  Lavender struggled, threshing around in the straw and succeeding in doing nothing other than lose her bonnet. ‘There must be any number of women who would wish to be Lady Kenton of Kenton Hall!’

 
‘I daresay, but I want this one! Lavender, I love you! Must you be so difficult?’

  Lavender lay still and looked up into the dark eyes so very close to her own. She put out a hand to touch his cheek. ‘I am not sure…’ she murmured.

  Barney took her hand in his, turned it over and kissed the palm. ‘Then I must make you sure,’ he said huskily. ‘Where had we got to, that day at Steepwood Pool? Ah, I remember…Your hair was tumbled all about you…’ He paused to look at her, ‘just as it is now. And your dress…’ His fingers moved to the buttons at her neck.

  Lavender slapped his hand aside. ‘Barney! What are you doing—’

  Barney looked at her expressively. He was shrugging off his jacket and untying his stock. ‘I would have thought that that is obvious! I am seducing you in order to force you to marry me!’ He pulled his shirt over his head with an impatient gesture. ‘Oh, and also because I wish to do so!’

  Lavender sat up abruptly, just as he leant over her again. The movement brought her palms up against the smooth brown skin of his chest and she lay back with a little gasp.

  ‘Oh! Surely you cannot be serious! There is no need to seduce me!’

  ‘You disappoint me.’ Barney’s breath stirred a tendril of hair as his lips drifted across the soft skin below her ear. They moved on to brush her mouth, lightly, teasingly, before withdrawing. ‘So you will marry me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lavender whispered, pinned to the spot by the heat in his eyes. ‘Oh yes, I will…’

  ‘Good,’ Barney sounded brisk, but he lowered his mouth to hers again with lazy sensuality. ‘We shall seal our bargain,’ he said, against her mouth.

  His lips teased hers apart, deepening the kiss until Lavender’s head spun and the blood burned hot in her veins. When Barney’s fingers returned to the neck of her gown and started to undo the row of buttons at her throat, she did not resist but tried to help, clumsy in her eagerness. The material parted, and as Barney bent to kiss the hollow of her throat, Lavender ran her hands over his shoulders, pulling him closer, revelling in the velvet hardness of the muscles beneath his skin.