“I did not mean to burden you with my gloom, my lady. I apologize.” Hoyt rose, as if preparing to leave.
“Sit down,” she ordered. “I am trapped in this house day in and day out, doomed to listen to old biddies prosing and posturing, asking when I’ll begin entertaining again. I haven’t decided if I shall. I would appreciate some good, honest talk.”
Politely, if rather absently, Lord Quentin returned to his seat, setting aside the hat he hadn’t relinquished upon entering. His broad shoulders overwhelmed the slender chairback. “I am at your service, as ever, my lady.”
He did not seem excessively appreciative that he was the first Hoyt outside of Edward’s sisters to cross the threshold. Nor did he seem the obsequious type inclined to flatter her generosity. Annoying man. “Isabell. My name is Isabell. If we are to be friends, we must speak as equals.”
“Are we to be friends?” he asked quizzically, rightfully so.
“I hold nothing against you or your family.” She gestured as if waving away decades of old grudges. “Although I suppose you have every right to hate me. Do you?”
“Hate you?” He blinked, and for the first time since he’d entered, he actually focused on her. A decidedly male interest sharpened his dark gaze.
She preened, if only just a little. It had been a very long time since she’d felt like a woman, much less an attractive one. Perhaps she wouldn’t bury herself in blacks and caps just yet. “My husband and I have not been considerate toward your family.”
He shrugged. “You are the one who had to live with the curmudgeon all these years. You’ve earned your wealth the hard way.”
She snorted indelicately. “On my back? Granted, it ended up that way, but I was young, foolish, and thought myself in love at first. Love is highly overrated.”
“Possibly, but in our world, marriage can be beneficial in many ways. Your family gained from the marquess’s connections.”
“If saving my father from debtors’ prison and shipping my younger sisters to the Americas can be called gaining, then I suppose your argument is correct. But I do not consider selling my soul for money a wise choice, particularly since I have not seen my family since.”
He nodded his understanding. “But yours was an unusual situation, and you must admit, your current circumstances are better than they might have been otherwise. Had my friend Fitz found a lady of wealth, he might not have so readily committed the heroic deed of dying for the benefit of his estate.” He returned to looking miserable.
“Fitz? The younger Wyckerly, you mean?” she asked, appalled. “The lovely gambler? I sincerely regret his loss, but the man never committed a heroic deed in his life.” She gestured for Butler to set the tray down in front of her. “I find it hard to believe that he would die for anyone. Not that I find anything heroic in death.”
“They discovered his clothing and a fired pistol beside the river on the grounds of his estate.” Quentin swirled the brandy in the glass she handed him. “His father and brother were notorious wastrels, but Fitz always lived within his means. He must have despaired at being left an estate so mired in debt that he could not possibly have paid his way out in two lifetimes. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his cousin and heir is a man of fortune. No, I believe the evidence speaks for itself. Fitz did the honorable thing. He took his own life for the sake of his tenants and creditors.”
“Absolute balderdash. I daresay Danecroft’s tenants or creditors shot him down as they may have his antecedents in hopes that someone with sense and money would inherit. Or given the family’s general notoriety, perhaps his heir helped him depart this mortal coil. If memory serves me, his cousin Geoffrey has been courting a duke’s daughter. Even a bankrupt title would sway the tide in his favor.”
Like Lord Quentin, Geoffrey Wyckerly was also in trade. Without a title, he did not stand a chance as a prospect for any heiress among the ton.
Her guest possessed a refined air of intelligence and accomplishment as he considered her words. Isabell sat back and enjoyed the view. Now that she was wealthy and independent, perhaps she could start collecting cicisbei, as women did in her mother’s time. She would have to take a good look at herself in the mirror one of these days, but she feared what little beauty she’d once possessed had faded with age and disillusionment.
“If Fitz was murdered, then we must discover the murderer,” Quentin declared with a flash of outrage that was more pleasant to look upon than his earlier gloom.
“A blessing he wasn’t married, or I’d suspect the wife.”
Wrong thing to say. Quentin returned to his dismals. “I should have steered him toward the marriage mart, but he was doing fine on his own. I never anticipated that he’d inherit his family’s mistakes so soon. Or at all.”
Isabell rolled her eyes heavenward. “For pity’s sake, do you hate women so much that you are determined to snare some poor innocent in your Machiavellian coils? Can you think of anyone who would be happy married to a feckless gambler? As you are well aware, I know whereof I speak. He’d run through her dowry and leave her barefoot and pregnant. It would take the wealth of a duke to save the Danecroft estate. I will miss Fitz’s smile, but I would have shot him myself if he’d tried marrying for money.”
Quentin set down his glass, and his lovely brandy-colored eyes flashed again. “Fitz was a good man burdened by circumstance. Someone needs to come to the aid of the younger sons who have been raised to live as idle nobility but left with no means of support.”
Amused, Isabell sipped her brandy. “And you will find them all wealthy women to drag down with them?”
“If they are good women, they will provide a steadying effect, while their dowries would offer opportunities for advancement that young men need.”
Isabell enjoyed his outrage, so she politely refrained from snorting. “If they are good women, I would rather see them keep their fortunes to make lives of their own choosing. Why do they need irresponsible, impoverished husbands?”
“So they won’t become selfish harridans?” Snapping his hat back on his lovely curls, Lord Quentin stalked toward the door. “Instead of wasting time here, I shall look further into Fitz’s death.”
Oh, the man had a temper. She liked that. Showed spark, unlike Edward, who merely growled and closed the door when she expressed an opinion. “I don’t think it at all selfish for women to look after themselves and their families as men look after their own!” she threw after him. “The misfortune is that we are even more limited than younger sons in the ways society will allow us to do it.”
He halted in the doorway to glower at her. “Which is why women need men to take care of them! If Fitz had married well, he’d be doubling his wife’s fortune by now, whereas a female would fritter it away on fripperies.”
“I am female and I have no intention of frittering away my fortune on fripperies,” Isabell exclaimed, feeling the excitement of a challenge for the first time in a very long while. “I will show you that women can manage their wealth wisely.”
“How?” he asked cynically. “You have enough for ten lifetimes, so there is small chance you could squander it all.”
Happily remembering the letter she’d just read, Isabell smiled. Saving innocent young women from Quentin’s would-be predators suddenly seemed an excellent place to start. “I will give dowries to deserving young women so they may have the freedom to choose their own paths to happiness. I challenge you to find matches for your friends that can do the same.”
His dark eyes bored fiercely into her. “I say your young women would be happier married to my friends. I accept your challenge.”
“I will not see the dowries I provide go to your feckless friends, sir!”
A fiendish smile brightened his dark visage. “Would you care to make a wager?”
“I don’t gamble,” she said crossly. “That’s a fool’s game.” To which her father had been addicted, much to the despair and cost of his wife and daughters.
“We’ll exchange
no money,” he agreed. “If one of my friends marries one of your heiresses, you will agree to provide one of my younger sisters entrée to society and the wherewithal to do it in style.”
She liked what little she’d seen of his sisters. Now that Edward wasn’t there to object, she would have sought them out anyway, so she could scarcely lose. “Agreed,” she said with a simpering smile. “But I warn you that I shall see my heiresses, as you style them, well prepared to fend off fortune hunters.”
“My friends are career hunters. I wish you well of your silly heiresses.” He tapped his hat and strode out.
Isabell felt exhilarated. She’d been left bored and all alone for far too long. Lord Quentin had shown her that she needed a project to occupy her. She finished her sandwich, shook out her skirt, and marched back to the office. It was time someone helped her husband’s neglected relations—the female ones.
6
Still wearing her robe, Abigail brushed out her curls, then touched her nose and wondered if Mr. Wyckerly had actually counted all her freckles. She didn’t think it possible.
Even more irritated that she’d let her thoughts drift, she brushed harder. If she was to spend the rest of her life as a spinster, she must not be led astray by idle men.
She had never planned on being a spinster. Although her father was the least ambitious man she knew, he’d been generous and loving in his own way. She had thought if she could find a man with a little more purpose, she would be very happy married. Unfortunately, there were few interesting single men available in her limited surroundings.
So she’d fallen for the wonderful new vicar who had ambitions to rise higher than a small village. She would have made a fine vicar’s wife. Men of the church were seldom wealthy, but she was good at pinching pennies. She was educated sufficiently to converse with the wives of bishops and squires. With some effort, she might have even learned to accept living in a town as large as Oxford. She would have made an excellent partner.
But then her father had died. And now she was losing hope. And patience.
She set down her hairbrush and rose to take off her robe. She was no longer a naive child who believed men would solve her problems. The law was such that she required their aid, but they weren’t to be relied on in domestic matters.
Mr. Jack Wyckerly was certainly evidence of that. As far as she was aware, he’d never come back last night.
Setting her lips in a tight line to hold back her temper, she tugged a dowdy brown morning dress over her petticoat and tied the drawstrings. It seemed she would have to tend to her strawberry patch on her own. Perhaps she should meditate on how to save Penelope from her dastardly excuse of a father.
She took the back stairs down to the kitchen. Since the children had been removed from her ineffectual female guidance, she’d begun taking all her meals in the kitchen, where she at least had stoic Cook and shy Annie for company. They weren’t great conversationalists, but they listened when she talked.
As Abigail entered the kitchen, Penelope squealed, and both child and kitten dived under the sideboard. A pretty pink gown and ruffled petticoat had been left out for her to wear, but it appeared that Penelope disdained petticoats. And her stockings were dirty enough to be yesterday’s.
Abigail bent over to peer under the sturdy oak cabinet. “This kitten belongs in the stable with the others, Miss Penny.”
“I know! I’m trying to catch him. Papa thought I’d like to play with him.”
Rolling her eyes, Abigail scooped up the mewling runaway. Apparently the wayfaring stranger had found his way home sometime during the night—just long enough to disrupt the household, since there was no sign of him now.
A bowl of fresh strawberries and a pitcher of cream waited on the table. The aroma of cooking ham made her stomach rumble in anticipation. But she couldn’t eat until she’d straightened out Mr. Wyckerly. She’d tossed and turned all night, seething with fury at his neglect of his daughter, at his complete disregard for her fears—or for her shilling, for all that mattered. She refused to be treated as an insignificant female whose thoughts and concerns were of no relevance.
Carrying the squirming kitten, Abigail marched out the kitchen door. She had to assume her guest was up and about if he’d left a kitten for Penelope. The stable was empty since she’d sold the horses, but it was the first building in her path that might hide a man.
She entered to discover unfamiliar horses finishing off the last of the winter hay. Was that Billy’s pony trying to chew his way out of his stall?
Confusion didn’t eliminate her righteous anger. She let the kitten free and set out for the fields, primed for a showdown. Men who abandoned their children ought to be shot.
She found Wretched Wyckerly not hoeing her field but in the orchard, idling away his time by staring into an apple tree. Too angry to untie her tongue, she picked up a handful of small green apples and flung one at his broad back, clad only in a shirt. She didn’t want to know what he’d done with her father’s tweed coat or waistcoat. Probably sold them. The view of his muscled shoulders was practically indecent. She flung another apple as he turned to see who was pelting him.
He caught the second apple and juggled it from hand to hand while studying her with that infernally condescending look of puzzled amusement.
“Target practice?” he guessed. “Is there a prize for apple throwing at some rural festivity?”
She flung her third apple directly at his flat abdomen. If he would dress properly, she shouldn’t be able to see that he did not have a soft, paunchy stomach hanging over his belt like most gentlemen she knew.
He was fortunate that the fallen apple hadn’t rotted yet. It merely bounced off his taut muscles. His smile brightened.
“Good shot! May I suggest a smaller target next time—say that tailless rodent on the branch up there? I wager you can’t hit him.”
“That squirrel is my friend.” She launched the last of her ammunition at his fat head, but he easily dodged the blow. “You, on the other hand, are a rotten, no-good scoundrel who deserves whipping.”
He continued tossing his apple back and forth, pretending to ponder her accusations. His hair looked as rumpled as hers, but it fell in a handsome wave across his brow that gave him more appeal than a Roman god. She itched to run her fingers through the thick locks and push them from his eyes. Which made her even angrier.
“I don’t doubt that I’m a scoundrel,” he said with an appearance of thoughtfulness, “but I cannot see how I deserve whipping for missing my supper.”
“Your daughter thought she’d been abandoned! Again.” She threw up her hands in disgust and wished for a dozen more apples. “You could have been killed, and we had no way of knowing it. You cannot promise to return, then disappear instead!”
He grimaced. “I didn’t mean to cause concern. I was trying to be helpful.”
“Helpful?” She would be shrieking like a hawk if she didn’t recover her temper. Taking a deep breath as her stepmother had taught her, she squeezed her fingers into her palms and refrained from hunting down a hoe with which to bash some sense into his frivolous head. “In what world is disappearing for hours helpful?”
This time, she could swear he looked slightly embarrassed, but she refused to be fooled any longer. He might be lovely to look at, but so were stinging nettles.
“I am not accustomed to accounting to anyone for my time,” he admitted. “If I caused undue distress, I sincerely apologize. But I brought you better labor than I would be.” He gestured toward the strawberry field.
She had assigned him the strawberries because tending them was a woman’s simple duty, and she assumed he couldn’t do much damage to them. In his place, three strong men in shirtsleeves were hard at work.
She blinked in astonishment. That was Billy gathering the first fruits of the field. And Harry, the grocer, awkwardly hoeing grass from under the leaves. And . . . she swallowed and shook her head in disbelief. John, the barkeep, setting runners into mounds?<
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“How did you persuade them to help?” she asked, incredulity replacing her tantrum. “Billy’s so shy, he won’t even speak to me.”
“Golden boy?” Mr. Wyckerly studied his laborers. “He’s the one telling the others what to do. He is enamored of you. He’d probably crawl through mud and eat bugs if you asked it of him, but I’d recommend leaving him his pride. Men need something to get them through the humiliations of their day. Sometimes pride is all we have.”
Startled by such candor, she cast him a glance, but he seemed content to juggle his apple and study the work being done. She couldn’t think of any conniving scheme that would benefit from his declaration, so she had to accept it at face value. For now.
“Pride is a pretty poor substitute for substance,” she said. “Billy is two years younger than I am. He’ll inherit his father’s farm some day far in the future. In the meantime, he expends much energy arguing over how things should be done and sulking if he doesn’t get his own way. He may grow up in time, but he has little to be proud of now.”
Mr. Wyckerly nodded as if he understood. “We are not all of us born heroes, I fear. Women expect us to be wealthy and well-mannered and sophisticated. To be witty and thoughtful and honest. To be tender to children, loving to spouses and parents, and tough to bullies. Veritable saints, but . . .” He slanted her a look. “Pardon my bluntness, but women also expect us to be exciting, mysterious devils in the bedroom. Perhaps a contradiction?”
She blushed, not at all certain how to respond. No man had ever spoken to her in such . . . intimate . . . terms. Worse yet, he had to be speaking more of himself than poor Billy, who would never be witty or sophisticated. And now Mr. Wyckerly would have her thinking about what happened in beds, which was no doubt his intention. “I don’t believe I should like mysterious and exciting,” she announced. “I think I prefer honest and prompt.”
The Wicked Wyckerly Page 5
