The Earl's Countess 0f Convenience (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 1)

by Marguerite Kaye

  Either Alexander didn’t hear her, or he assumed that his silence was sufficient agreement. ‘I believe that some of these are very old.’

  ‘And very beautiful.’ Eloise opened the cover of a pianoforte and ran her fingers over the keys. ‘My sister would think herself in heaven, here.’

  ‘Estelle?’

  ‘Yes, though Phoebe is not without musical talent. It comes from our mother’s side of the family. Our grandmother used to give recitals, so Kate told us.’

  ‘Does it seem strange to you, to be living in your grandparents’ house, but never to have met them?’

  ‘It is sad, not strange. Mama was cut off from her family entirely when she eloped—I can’t remember, did I tell you she eloped? And Papa—oh, I don’t know for sure, but I think his family probably disowned him. Certainly, none of them came forward to claim us or his debts when he died.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious to discover whether you have relatives in Ireland still?’

  ‘No.’ She sat down beside him, sliding her slippered foot back and forward on the highly polished parquet flooring. ‘You probably think that odd, given that I am so very close to my sisters, but why should I wish to know people who did not wish to know us in our time of need?’

  ‘Why indeed! Though I do wonder if they might choose to know you now.’

  ‘Now that I am Lady Fearnoch and married to a rich man, you mean? I should give them short shrift, I assure you.’

  ‘I’d like to see that. Or, no, on second thoughts, I’d rather the occasion did not arise.’

  ‘Phoebe and Estelle don’t feel as I do. They don’t say it, for fear of upsetting me, but I think they would like to be able to claim a cousin or two.’

  ‘Blood being thicker than water? For what it is worth, I am with you. I see no reason why one should forgive a relative what one would not forgive a friend.’

  Eloise reached up to caress his cheek, a habitual gesture of sympathy, of affection that she used so often she was unaware of it, until her skin came in contact with Alexander’s and awareness jolted through her. Then the clock on the mantel struck the hour, and a cacophony of other clocks followed at intervals, the ringing and chiming sounding throughout the house, and she yanked her hand away. ‘What on earth?’

  ‘The Fourth Earl collected clocks. It seems none of them keep the exact right time,’ Alexander said, rolling his eyes as one clock took over just as another ended. ‘Shall we continue?’

  * * *

  Two hours later, each grand room was beginning to blur one into the other. Eloise had lost count of the number of drawing rooms and parlours she’d seen, and of the miles of corridors they’d walked, the stairs they had climbed in order to do so. There was a gallery filled with paintings by old masters. There was a billiard room, a ballroom, several dining rooms, and many others with no obvious purpose at all, save to store quantities of outmoded furniture. Every room was elaborately corniced. There were clocks everywhere, chiming almost constantly. And they had explored neither the kitchens nor the bedchambers, nor the attics. The Earls of Fearnoch were collectors of objets d’art, of curios, of furnishings and paintings, of anything, it seemed to Eloise, that cost a great deal and was mostly useless.

  In one of the morning rooms, there had been a set of five bizarre glass-fronted display cases stacked in a pyramid, each containing two stuffed squirrels dressed as bare-knuckle pugilists, in short trousers with their paws bandaged. Following the display from the top down, Eloise could see that each vignette represented the different stages of a fight, for in the top the rodents were shaking hands, and in the last, one was standing triumphant over the other. Alexander had been confounded when, consulting the inventory, the squirrels were recorded as being Walter’s doing. What kind of man was he, who could spend so much time painstakingly creating this grotesque work, with such obvious skill too? A libertine, according to Alexander, a wastrel and a spendthrift, judging by what she’d seen of this house, following in the footsteps of a long line of mountebanks. She found it sad, for all that the various collections showed taste and discrimination, there was nothing else to show for the Earls’ industry, save this vast, opulent edifice. Perhaps the estates—but, no, Alexander had said that they were run by a manager.

  What was he feeling? He had grown more and more silent as each room unveiled itself. He was so very different from his ancestors. It occurred to her then that there had been no portraits, and she was about to question him on this when he threw open another set of double doors and Eloise was confronted with a room which could have been designed specifically with her in mind.

  ‘A library,’ she said, surveying the room with delight.

  ‘A library,’ Alexander echoed, staring about him with equal fascination.

  It was another vast room but, unlike any of the others, it gave the impression of intimacy. The ceiling was a simple latticework of cornicing, painted plain white. The walls were covered in a rich crimson damask, and lined with bookcases crammed full of books. The wood was oak, carved in the Jacobean style, as was the huge wooden mantel, but everything else in the room seemed to be designed for comfort rather than effect. There were two huge sofas facing each other across the hearth, a desk set in the window embrasure, any number of side tables, footstools, and comfortable armchairs, which seemed to Eloise to be crying out for a reader, a stack of books and a lazy day of reading. There was only one small clock, an exquisite bronze of Venus rising from the waves, and no other artefacts.

  She ran her fingers along the spines of the books, which were shelved in no particular order, some unbound, others not even cut. ‘There is a real treasure trove here.’

  ‘The Sixth Earl acquired most of it in one job lot,’ Alexander said, frowning over the inventory.

  The Sixth Earl was his father. His brother had been the Seventh. He referred to Walter by name, but never once could she recall him making reference to any of the other Earls in a familiar manner.

  ‘It seems that none of this has ever been catalogued,’ Alexander said, looking up from his study of a large folio. ‘I doubt much of it has ever been read.’

  ‘We could work on the catalogue together.’ Eloise joined him. The folio was of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary. ‘That looks to me as if it may be a very early edition.’

  ‘It is,’ Alexander said, closing it carefully. ‘Are you serious about the cataloguing? There must be thousands of books here.’

  She’d thought it would be fun to work together on a common interest, locked away in this lovely room, just the two of them, and all these rarities waiting to be discovered. She’d thought it would appeal to Alexander too, producing a catalogue, creating order out of chaos, because that was what he did as a Victualling Commissioner, wasn’t it?

  He was smiling quizzically at her. ‘Are you thinking that it is a task perfectly suited to my skills as an Admiralty clerk?’

  ‘I was simply thinking that it would be a project we might enjoy together, but I realise...’

  He caught her shoulder, turning her back to face him. ‘I was teasing you. I thought you could always tell. What was it you said, about my smile being in my eyes?’

  ‘It hasn’t reached your eyes at all since we arrived here.’

  He grimaced, slotting the folio gently back into its place on the shelves. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill for today—the rooms are beginning to merge, aren’t they?’

  ‘I remember each by the cornicing, the shape of the room and the colours.’ Eloise said. ‘I don’t have any idea how I’d get to the Grand Dining Room from here, but I know it has a blue ceiling and relief panels on the walls. I loved the harlequin style of the plasterwork in the second drawing room, and the colours, the olive green and terracotta with touches of black, were wonderful. Then in the oval drawing room there were the Roman-style reliefs, and...’

  ‘Enough!’ Alexander exclaimed. ‘Are there alr
eady plans fermenting away in your head regarding changes you want to make?’

  She sank on to one of the pair of sofas facing each other across the hearth, throwing up a cloud of dust that made her cough. ‘Replace these, for a start, though aside from that, I think this room is quite perfect.’

  ‘This is your idea of perfect?’ Alexander said, sitting down tentatively beside her.

  ‘Perfectly comfortable, compared to almost every other room we’ve seen so far. Fearnoch House feels more like a vast display cabinet than a home, but if you were happy to spend only a little money, I think it could be made into one.’

  ‘This will be your home, and you can spend as much as you like.’

  ‘It will be your home too, Alexander. Permanently, until our marriage is established, and afterwards—how often do you think you will be back in England?’

  ‘It depends. There is no pattern to where my duties take me. It is impossible to predict.’

  ‘Don’t you have any say in the matter?’

  He hesitated only briefly. ‘No.’

  Eloise waited, thinking to try a little of his silent tactics on him, but when she raised her brows enquiringly, Alexander simply drew her a bland look.

  ‘What time will I order breakfast for?’ she asked. ‘You said—or you implied—that you would be continuing with your work in the short term, though not with the travel, so I assume that will entail a journey to your offices and an earlier start? What time will suit? Eight?’

  ‘Eight.’ He shrugged ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when should I expect you back for dinner?’

  ‘I have no idea. That is—what I mean is, my work does not usually follow a strict routine—since I am so often abroad.’ He frowned down at his hand, as if he was surprised to see it still covered hers.

  ‘But now, won’t the person to whom you report expect you to keep more regular hours?’

  For some reason he seemed to find what she said amusing. ‘I think I will be permitted a little leeway, as a newly married man.’

  ‘I simply—I don’t want to intrude on your life any more than I need to.’

  ‘We’ve been married a day, and you’re already wanting rid of me.’

  ‘You’ve made it clear how important your work is to you.’

  ‘It is, but right now, there are more important things. More important even than the Admiralty.’ He angled himself towards her, his knee brushing her leg, and covered her hands with his. ‘Do you think you can be happy here, or at the very least content?’

  ‘I think the question is rather whether you will be happy here, to be honest. I can make Fearnoch House comfortable, I can claim it for my own, because unlike you, there are no memories, no associations.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to be quite so grand.’

  ‘Surely you must have guessed, from the country estate where you were raised, that...’

  His fingers tightened around hers. ‘I knew the value of my inheritance from Robertson. I knew that this house and its contents were worth a great deal. But it’s one thing to see it written down on paper. To see it all in the flesh, so to speak, it’s...’

  He shook his head. He let her go, throwing himself back on the sofa, stretching his long legs out in front of him, staring up at the ceiling. ‘It makes what he did to my mother all the more unforgivable. It would literally have been a drop in the ocean to him, to have made her a decent settlement, but he chose not to.’

  ‘You are talking about the change to your father’s will—you think it was a calculated act? The first time we met, you said it was punitive.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Was it?’ Eloise persisted. ‘Punitive, I mean?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  What was her crime? What did she do to deserve such a thing? The questions were so obvious there was no need for her to ask him. Experience had taught her that Alexander would immediately change the subject. She was bracing herself to force the issue, but he surprised her.

  ‘If I’d been raised here, in the bosom of my family,’ he said, ‘I’d be a very different person.’ He rubbed his eyes, sitting up. ‘I spent all my time at Fearnoch Manor when I was not at school. Though it is actually the size of several manor houses cobbled together. I think each Earl added his own wing in his own particular style. But I was not permitted in the main house, Eloise. I had my own quarters, a much smaller lodge, complete with my own meagre staff. When my family were in residence, if I happened to be home from school, I was confined to those quarters.’

  She stared at him, momentarily confounded. ‘Dear God, that is—I don’t know what to say.’ All her instincts were to hug him, to comfort him, as she would her sisters, but his expression was stony, he was sitting up rigidly, his shoulders stiff with the effort of keeping his feelings in check. ‘I thought, when you said that you’d been brought up in the country, I thought...’

  ‘I know what you thought, because it’s what I led you to believe. I thought it didn’t matter—I had come to believe it didn’t matter. Until today. It’s not that I feel I have missed out, believe me. I meant what I said, I have never envied my brother. It is more that—it’s difficult to explain. When you asked me last night what I remembered of my life here, I meant it when I said virtually nothing. I don’t recognise any of the rooms we’ve visited today, there’s nothing familiar about the place at all save the feeling I had when we arrived.’

  ‘You were reluctant to cross the threshold, weren’t you?’

  ‘I was worried doing so might trigger unpleasant memories, better left undisturbed. You see, I told you it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘But it does, Alexander. That is why I have no wish to return to Ireland. My memories of it are bad enough, but I’m pretty sure there’s worse I don’t remember.’

  ‘You spent nineteen years at home though. I was only five when I left for school. My memories of those days are more positive.’

  There was a fine line with him, Eloise recognised. He would reveal so much, and then he would close the door. He had already confided in her far more than she had expected, thanks to the effect this house had had on him. She did not want to distress him any further. ‘So you enjoyed school?’

  ‘I did, does that surprise you?’

  ‘I thought all boys hated school.’

  ‘I was a good student, a rare combination of brain and brawn,’ he said wryly. ‘At school, it is important to have the latter if one has the former. Boys can be vicious.’

  ‘You were bullied?’

  He shook his head, smiling faintly. ‘No, what I’m trying to say is that I was not.’

  ‘But you had to—are you saying you had to box, like those squirrels?’

  ‘With less finesse, but, yes, I suppose you could say that. Schools, the kind of schools that educate our Establishment, pride themselves on the brutality of their regime. I decided to fight fire with fire.’

  ‘But you were so very young. What about your brother, didn’t he protect you? Or didn’t he attend the same school as you?’

  ‘Walter didn’t attend any school, and even if he had, he was eight years older than I. It was not the done thing, to look out for a younger sibling. A boy must learn to fight his own battles.’

  She eyed him, aghast. ‘What about the boys who cannot defend themselves? They must have lived a miserable life, poor little souls. And you were—did you say five when you were packed off to prep school? That is barely weaned, for heaven’s sake. My mother fought tooth and nail to keep Diarmuid at home, and he was ten. Didn’t your mother—? Oh, God, no, she didn’t. I am so sorry.’

  ‘It is of no consequence.’

  But she could see from the set of his mouth that it was. ‘It was one of the few times that my father overruled my mother,’ Eloise rushed on, ‘insisting that Diarmuid was schooled in England. He said that the most long-lasting connections w
ere those established at school, that my brother would thank him for it later in life, for sending him to a school where the most influential families in England sent their sons.’

  ‘Which school was it?’

  ‘He was enrolled at Eton. They were en route to England from Dublin, my brother and my parents, when the ship went down with all hands in a storm. Poor Diarmuid, I fear Mama’s cosseting of him was very poor preparation for what he’d have endured at school. I doubt he even knew how to form a fist, let alone how to use one. Did you attend Eton?’

  ‘Nothing so prestigious, though my school suited me very well. I was recruited into the Admiralty from there. One of the senior masters thought I was a good fit.’

  ‘Because you had a good brain but were also—what is the phrase, handy with your fists?’

  ‘Something like that. Sailors are a rough lot who’ll chance their arm if they sense weakness. It helps if they know you will not be taken in or intimidated.’

  ‘But you are a Victualling Commissioner.’

  Alexander laughed. ‘I am still capable of defending myself if I need to.’

  ‘I had no idea your work was dangerous.’

  ‘It’s not, unless you count death by a thousand paper cuts,’ he said airily. ‘More important even than my ability to defend myself or to write a legible hand, what I learned from being sent away to school at such an early age was how to fend for myself.’

  ‘You mean you can cook? Sew on a button?’

  ‘And even black my own boots. But what I meant was, I’m very resourceful.’

  ‘And you are also happy in your own company. “Solitary by nature” I think is how you put it.’

  ‘Did I? I hope you know that I am more than happy in your company.’

  ‘I hope you know that the feeling is reciprocated.’

  ‘I do.’ Alexander took her left hand, turning the wedding ring around her finger. ‘It’s hard to believe that we’ve only been married a day. If you counted up the hours we’ve actually spent together—I feel I’ve known you much longer.’