by June Calvin
“She manages Jason’s land?” Edmund whistled softly. “Then I take it the dilapidated farm I viewed earlier this morning is yours, Miss Ormhill?”
“Yes, to my sorrow.” Lavinia Ormhill began to chuckle. “I’ve rented it to a shiftless rascal, and can’t seem to get a better tenant. I suppose I should have turned it over to Livvy long before now, but I felt she had enough on her plate.”
“Far from wishing to wrest the management of her land from her, I am filled with admiration. Her knowledge vastly surpasses mine.” Edmund frowned. “It means I have just that much less to offer as a husband, alas, since she needs no assistance. What would I do with myself, I wonder?”
“Now, you aren’t going to shab off, are you?” Jason cried.
“No, of course not. It was a wager, and I am bound to marry her if I can.”
“Don’t look so downpin, Lord Edmund,” Miss Ormhill soothed him. “You may be just the man for our Livvy: A man who recognizes her ability, and won’t try to take over from her, yet one who loves the country life, might be perfect for her, if she will but give up her decision never to marry. Surely you can find a role to play in our family’s extensive holdings. Manage mine, at the very least.” Having reached her decision, Lavinia Ormhill clapped her hands on her knees. “Well, shall we approach the lioness in her den, Nephew?” She leaned forward expectantly.
“You insist she be told the truth?”
“I do.” Miss Ormhill folded her arms across her broad bosom. “I’ll not be moved on that score.”
“Ah, well. Come along, then, Lord Edmund. We shall try our fate, eh?”
Chapter Four
Once again the trio traveled the narrow hall that led to the offices. This time Jason led, followed by Edmund, while Miss Ormhill brought up the rear.
At the end of the hall, Jason carefully opened the final door and peered in. Satisfied, he quietly pushed it open, motioning his comrades-in-arms to remain behind. From his vantage point in the hall Edmund could see a young woman, her back to them, sitting at a wide, cluttered desk. It was positioned to face a French window that revealed through diamond-shaped panes of glass a panoramic view of the valley below the manor.
Edmund steeled himself for the meeting. In spite of the Ormhills’ tale that she had chosen not to marry, he realized that the younger Miss Ormhill must be of a similar stamp as her aunt. After all, Jason and Lavinia closely resembled one another. The swarthy complexion, heavy brow, long Roman nose, and strong chin of the nephew found their counterparts in Miss Lavinia Ormhill. These features, pleasing enough in a man, served a woman poorly. Edmund pitied the other Miss Ormhill if she shared them, and himself for having to look at such over his meals for the rest of his life.
But a gaming debt must be paid if at all possible. At least she is young, he comforted himself.
Gazing at the bent head of the young woman in front of him, Edmund noted immediately that unlike those of her relatives, her neck was long, slender, and graceful. Delicate curling tendrils of brunette hair escaped a high, loosely arranged upsweep of curls, giving the neck a tender appeal. He caught his breath, barely daring to hope, as Jason proceeded to his sister’s side and kissed her cheek.
She lifted her head to look up at him affectionately, presenting Edmund with a delightful profile that might have served the most exacting of cameo makers. Dark curls kissed a high forehead above a patrician nose and sweetly curving lips.
“Hullo, love,” she said in a throaty voice. “You’re up and about early for a man whose allowance was burning a hole in his pocket the night before. Did you have luck?”
Jason stepped to her side and took her hands in his, laying down the quill pen she had held. “The best of luck, Livvy. I’ve found you a husband.”
“How thoughtful of you, dear,” she murmured vaguely. “But I don’t want a husband, you know.” She reached up and patted his cheek. “A pity you could not have got me someone to bring in the hay.”
She tried to return to her work, but Jason tugged on her hands impatiently, pulling her from her chair. “No, no, you don’t understand, Livvy. He’s a good man, and a lord, you see. I’ve brought you a lord. Come, let me introduce you.”
Miss Ormhill allowed herself to be turned to face Edmund, whom Jason urged into the room, closely followed by his aunt. Jason hastened to make the introductions, grandly announcing his guest as “Lord Edmund Debham, youngest brother of the fourth Marquess of Heslington.”
Edmund’s breath caught in his throat as Miss Ormhill turned toward him. She was exquisite. Her eyes were as blue as the summer sky, and her complexion smooth and creamy. She had a perfect oval face with a tiny cleft in her chin. Her only resemblance to her brother and aunt lay in the color of her eyes and her full lower lip. He was as astonished as he was relieved to find that this was the woman he had agreed to marry. But it made her unwed state even that much more amazing. He had felt skeptical of the Ormhills’ story of love betrayed as a reason for her being single, but now he had to give it credence.
Olivia Ormhill curtsied, then offered Edmund her hand. Her firm grip brought her hand against his own in a contact that affected him like a shock from a Leyden jar. To his vast relief she gave him a shy but welcoming smile instead of the contempt or aloofness he might well have received. Perfection, he thought, taking in her tall, slender form and elegant dress.
“Aunt,” she said, nodding in acknowledgment of Lavinia Ormhill. “So you are here to lend countenance to this match?” Her lips curved again in a smile that was almost mischievous.
“I hope you will not be hasty in your decision, dearest. Lord Edmund has much to recommend him.”
Miss Ormhill’s eyes briefly swept Edmund head to foot. He knew he did not show to great advantage at this moment, having been forced to dress himself in the clothes he had been wearing the night before. That his garments were neither new nor in the highest kick of fashion he suddenly felt keenly. Miss Olivia Ormhill looked to be a young woman of refined taste.
He swept his hand through his unruly brown hair and felt himself licking his lips like a frightened lad from the nursery. This won’t do, he admonished himself. If you could lead the forlorn hope in an assault on a Spanish fortress, you can face this lovely creature. He set himself to charm her, straightening to his full and rather imposing height and smiling down at her, the lazy, caressing smile that had won so much feminine admiration in the past.
“I, too, hope you will not be hasty, though at the moment I am afraid your aunt is too sanguine. I do not have so very much to recommend me, Miss Ormhill, other than my own person and an ardent desire to wed you.”
“So sudden a wooing, Lord Edmund,” she murmured. But her expression remained pleasant. She cocked her head to one side curiously as he hastened to explain, for he would not have her humbugged.
“I’ll be brutally honest with you. As a result of a dispute with my eldest brother, I am quite cast off by my family. Thanks to your brother’s skill at cards, I am also virtually penniless. But—”
“But he is a hero, sister,” Jason hastened to add. “Wellington mentioned him in his dispatches, and you know how stingy the duke is with such praise.”
“And he yearns for the country life, Olivia. No Bond Street lounger, this,” Lavinia added in a challenging tone.
“I see.” Miss Ormhill’s delicate eyebrows began to draw down in a frown. “Is this proposed marriage the result of a wager?”
When Jason hesitated, Edmund answered for him. “It is, Miss Ormhill.”
“Really, Jason!” She half turned away, then rounded on her brother. “Penniless, did he say? You won a great deal from him last night?”
“Well . . .” Jason looked acutely uncomfortable.
“All that I had,” Edmund stated baldly. “Your brother is a formidable opponent.”
“And were you drinking at the time, Jason?”
“Now see here, Livvy. It is just as Lord Edmund says. I played well and—”
“Drinking heavily?” Sh
e tapped her right foot on the ground in the manner of impatient, determined females from time immemorial.
“He drank as much,” Jason growled, not meeting his sister’s gaze. “Tell her, Lord Edmund.”
Not quite sure of the relevance of this part of their tale, Edmund nevertheless asserted, “I did, indeed, drink heavily.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Miss Ormhill turned those clear blue eyes on him, all traces of humor gone. “You aren’t the first to attempt to fleece my brother in such circumstances. But in fact, he fleeced you. You see, the more my brother drinks, the better he plays. No one understands it, but it is true. We’ve discussed the unfairness of playing others thus, Jason.”
“It is because I learned to play while dead drunk,” Jason explained, looking proud of himself. “Anything I learn while drunk, I have difficulty remembering when sober, but remember soon enough with a few drinks in me. And I can do sums foxed I could never tackle sober.”
At her use of the term fleeced, Edmund had winced. But what right had he to pride? It was a bit too true to his intentions, at least at one point last night, for him to protest. He did not want her to doubt the validity of the wager. He ardently hoped she would choose to honor it, as her concern for the fairness of the game suggested she might. Never had he wanted anything as much as to convince this lovely creature to marry him.
“I was warned, Miss Ormhill, by both your brother and the innkeeper. You need not scold your brother, for I played with that understanding in mind.”
“But did you believe them?”
He hesitated, then shook his head.
“As I thought. He took advantage of you, while you tried to take advantage of him. A pretty pair, to be sure! I don’t precisely see how you managed to lose your money but win me from my brother while he was in his cups, my lord. In these parts, at least, he is reckoned unbeatable in such circumstances. However, that is neither here nor there. The choice of my husband lies with me. Jason wagered a stake he could not pay. He has no power to compel me to marry, my lord. And I will not do so. Most particularly not a penniless gamester who does not shy away from taking advantage of his opponent. Moreover, one who has nothing to recommend him but a courtesy title, a name for foolhardy bravery, and a pleasing appearance.” Those bright blue eyes scanned Edmund coldly and contemptuously before turning back to her brother, who was spluttering out a protest.
“You must make matters right with Lord Edmund yourself, Jason. I am not a chit to be wagered away in a card game.”
“You mistake the matter, Miss Ormhill,” Edmund snapped, caught on the raw by her harsh words. “I do not come to you as a winner claiming his prize, but as a loser, bound to marry you by the terms of our wager. Your brother warned me that your circumstances were such as to make you independent and that your disposition was far from pleasant. I see he did not exaggerate. Yet however little I might wish to take such as you to wife, I am bound by my word.”
Edmund had the satisfaction of seeing her face color with embarrassment and anger. She needed taking down a peg. Nor did he misstate his feelings. His sudden desire to marry this self-possessed, beautiful, wealthy young woman had just as suddenly been blasted to nothingness by the heat of her scornful diatribe. To do so would be utter misery. Better she had been plain and dowdy. Better she had been Miss Lavinia Ormhill, who at least had a heart, and needed his help with her land.
“How dare you speak so of my niece,” her aunt protested.
“Of all the rag-mannered, ill-advised things to say,” Jason shouted at him.
“Take your ‘winnings’ with you, Jason! I hope I may never set eyes on him again.” Miss Ormhill turned her back on them. Closing the ledger she had been working on with a bang, she swept around the edge of the desk and toward the window.
“But . . . but . . . Olivia, this isn’t fair. I have at last found you a husband in no position to object to the terms of your settlement under Father’s will, and can make you ‘my lady,’ as Father wished.”
“I do not believe in slavery, Jason. If he were the most desirable of husbands I would not have him under such circumstances.” Miss Ormhill jerked open the French doors. “I suggest that the two of you work out some other way of satisfying the wager. And be sure it does not involve me!” She stepped out onto the stone veranda and briskly walked away.
“Now you have done it! You’ve forfeited,” Jason snarled wrathfully at Edmund.
“I have not. I won’t be abused in that way by any woman. But I will keep my word, however reluctantly, if she can be persuaded to change her mind. Though how you ever expected such a creature to fall in with this scheme, I cannot imagine.”
“You’ve made mice feet of this whole thing, both of you,” the elder Miss Ormhill declared before following her niece out of the room.
* * *
Olivia stormed down the path that led from her office to the stables. Nothing would ease her feelings but a hard, fast ride. Anger at her brother’s scheme was the least of it. The disdain she felt for Lord Edmund did not surprise her. The pain his stinging words of rejection had caused her did. What was he, after all, that she should wish his regard? She had spoken nothing but the truth about him.
That everything about him appealed to her, from his wavy brown hair and warm brown eyes to his handsome face and tall, vibrantly masculine form, should have nothing to say to the matter!
When she heard her aunt calling her, she had to fight the desire to break into a run and gain the stable and her mount before Lavinia could catch up to her. But ingrained habits of respect caused her to turn reluctantly.
“Don’t put on that mulish face to me, my girl. What you just did was appalling.”
“What I just did? Aunt, how can you? Surely you don’t wish me to marry such a . . . a . . .”
“Handsome, well-mannered, well-bred, and willing man? Yes, I do. Or at least, I wish you to give yourself time to see if you would like to do so. But even if I did not, I would deplore your hateful words. Equivalent to kicking a man when he is down, Livvy, and not at all in your usual style.”
Olivia turned and began walking away. She could not, would not admit to her aunt what she hardly admitted to herself: her heart had fluttered, then raced, at her first sight of Edmund Debham. The touch of his hand on hers had sent a thrill straight to her toes. The attraction she felt to him had astonished but not displeased her at first, for she had never thought to feel thus again for any man.
Then she had discovered the truth: he was nothing but a rum-soaked gamester, a shabby one at that, and a Captain Sharp, attempting to best her brother under unfair circumstances. And then to learn that he had lost. That he sought her hand only because he had no alternative. Oh! The taste of ashes was in her mouth. She barely heard her aunt scolding her.
“If you must refuse them, carry it off with humor; that is what you have always said, and what you have done in the past. What maggot got into your head? Now you’ve got Jason horribly upset, and he has already been far too unhappy lately for me to be comfortable as it is.”
This caught Olivia’s attention. “What . . . what do you mean, Aunt?”
“You know how moped he has been. He is an active young man, ripe for adventure. At eighteen, no wonder! It is his birthright to discover the world. To remain shut up here in Buckinghamshire with his older sister and his ancient aunt is torture to him.”
“If he would only interest himself in the management of his estates . . .”
“Well, he won’t. Not until he has had a bit of fun.”
“I have said many times that he may go, that he should go. I am no longer the young girl my father begged him to protect. As if he could have protected me at fifteen anyway.”
“You know he would never break his promise. Nor would you have him be the kind of young man who would do so.”
Olivia shook her head impatiently. “We have been over this a hundred times. But what did you mean to imply? You do not suppose he will do himself an injury?”
“Yes
, my dear, I do. Oh, I don’t mean that he’d take his life, not on purpose. But there are other ways. Drinking and gambling in taverns . . .”
“With Uncle Milton to keep him company! Coming it too strong, Aunt.” Olivia strove for jocularity.
“May I point out that my brother had retired to his bed long before the mischief was done last night? Nor was this the first time Jason has gambled into the night with strangers. And then there is the riding.”
Olivia shuddered. Jason had always been a bruising rider. Lately he had become a reckless one. Not two weeks ago he had come a cropper at a wall he never should have attempted, injuring his favorite hunting hack in the process.
“Yes, you understand me. Somehow this situation has got to be resolved. And that poor young man may just hold the key.”
“But not the key to my heart. Not that you care for that!”
“The man who had the key to your heart threw it away. The heart can be a very false guide, my love. You pride yourself on being a rational female. At least consider the advantages of wedding Lord Edmund.”
Olivia shook her head. “You heard him. He doesn’t want to marry me. But even if he did, and even if I gave up my determination to be a spinster, I simply can’t—won’t—give myself to such a man. Now, if you will excuse me, Aunt, I have some . . . some fields to inspect.”
“At the least, apologize to him for your harsh treatment. You don’t know his full situation.” Not to be denied, Lavinia took Olivia’s arm and steered her back toward the house as she explained what she knew about Lord Edmund.
“And I don’t doubt his brother disowned him,” Lavinia added at the end of the recitation, “for he is a hard man. Your father disliked him intensely.”
