Phoebe bristled. She did not set much store on titles or formality, but she did not appreciate the label of daft woman.
“That is going to change, Mr. Weston. Lord Merritt has promised that any man who wants a job can find one at the manor. That includes you.”
“Mucking out stables? No thanks, m’lady. I’ll take care of my boy in my own fashion, without any charity from you or his lordship.”
“Yes,” she retorted. “I can see you are making a fine job of it.”
He jerked slightly, as if she’d slapped him, then his face reddened again. “No thanks to you or your husband,” he sneered. “Or the old earl, either. Now give Sam the dog and let’s get on with it.”
Phoebe tilted her chin. “I have no idea what you want to get on with, but I have already made it clear that threats are unnecessary. I will not turn you over to the authorities, nor will I reveal your identity to my husband.”
“Pa, listen to her,” pleaded Sam.
“Aye, Ned,” piped in a man who sounded suspiciously like the local blacksmith. “My missus says the lady is a good ’un. Let ’er go and let’s get out of ’ere.”
That intervention was all it took, and suddenly everyone was arguing with everyone else. Sam tugged on his father’s arm, pleading with him to let her go, and the dog set up a barrage of excited snarls and yips. Mr. Weston seemed to be arguing with all of them, even as he kept a grip on her arm. Phoebe was convinced they must be the noisiest smuggling ring in England.
A familiar, lugubrious voice cut through the din.
“Ned Weston, you will unhand her ladyship now.”
A shocked silence fell over the glade as everyone spun to stare at Mr. Christmas, who had snuck right up on them. Not that such a feat had been difficult to manage, since they had been making such a din an elephant could have paraded by and they would not have noticed.
Much to Phoebe’s surprise, Mr. Weston dropped her arm. “Thank you,” she said automatically. Then she peered at Mr. Christmas, attired in a dark greatcoat and sturdy boots, and looking for all the world like—
“Mr. Christmas, not you, too,” she groaned.
Mr. Weston snorted. “That Friday face, one of us? Not likely. But he’s always skulking around when we’re making a run across the manor’s lands, just to make sure we don’t get up to anything. Acts like we’re common criminals, he does.”
“You are criminals,” Phoebe said. Then she switched her attention to the butler. “You knew about these smuggling runs?”
After he nodded, she studied him for a few moments, while the men all exchanged uneasy glances.
“And you wanted to make sure no one got hurt,” Phoebe said. “Is that correct?”
“Yes, my lady,” Mr. Christmas answered mournfully. “To that end, I would suggest Mr. Weston and his men move along. Lord Merritt is on his way to join you and the children, and I fear he will be upon us soon. I shudder to think how he might react if he were to discover you thus.”
That image made Phoebe shudder, too. “You are absolutely right. Mr. Weston, you and your men would be wise to depart immediately.”
The publican looked ready to argue, but she held up her hand. “I have promised not to alert his lordship to your presence, and I intend to keep that promise.”
Her stomach twisted at the idea of withholding the truth from Lucas, but right now she had no choice. If he discovered the smugglers were making runs across manor lands—and that Mr. Weston had threatened her—Lucas would hand the entire gang over to the law for deportation or execution. That would blight too many lives to count, especially those of the children. Phoebe simply refused to carry the burden of such a dreadful outcome.
Mr. Weston rubbed his face, frustrated and, she thought, worried. He glanced down at Sam, who clutched his father’s arm in a nervous grip.
Phoebe shifted the dog and reached out to rest a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Mr. Weston,” she said in a gentle voice, “you must trust me. I would never do anything to hurt the people of Apple Hill, including you and your men, or your families. But my husband has a different notion of justice. So, you must leave now, or face the consequences. I fear they would not be pretty.”
“Pa, let’s go,” urged Sam.
Mr. Weston hesitated, then nodded as the other men started to melt into the woods. He gave Sam a little nudge. “Go along, boy. I’ll be right behind you.”
Sam threw Phoebe a grateful smile, slipping away with his donkey to leave her, Mr. Weston, and Mr. Christmas in a wary circle, staring at each other.
“I have your word you won’t tell?” Mr. Weston asked her.
“You do.”
His mouth loosened in a grudging smile. “You ain’t what I expected, my lady.”
“Thank you. I think.”
He let out a gruff chuckle and touched the brim of his cap before heading after his son.
“Mr. Weston,” she called after him. He paused in the shadow of the trees. “You cannot evade my husband or Mr. Harper’s men for much longer,” she said. “The smuggling must stop, before Sam or anyone else is hurt.”
Silent and still, holding the donkey’s bridle, he stared back with a somber expression on his face. For the first time, she noticed how careworn he appeared. A man with too many burdens. “We’ll see, my lady.”
He faded into the forest, and all was still once more. Except for the presence of Mr. Christmas, Phoebe could almost imagine the entire episode had been a dream.
“My lady,” said the butler, casting an anxious glance over his shoulder, “you must return to the others.”
Phoebe nodded as she rearranged the dog more comfortably in her arms, then she and Mr. Christmas crossed the clearing, heading for the trail. “I will not ask how you knew about the smuggling run,” she said to him. “I do not think I want to know.”
“That would be for the best, my lady.” He eyed the dog in her arms. “Is your ladyship bringing the animal to the manor?”
“Of course I am! Did you think I would leave him out here to fend for himself ?”
“No, madam. I simply wondered—”
“Phoebe! Where are you?” Her husband’s call sounded alarmingly close, and they both froze in place.
“My lady,” Mr. Christmas said quickly, “if you don’t mind, I’ll take another route back to the house.”
She nodded. “Fine. But next time you hear anything at all about the smugglers, you must tell me. We cannot let this happen again.”
He gave her a courtly bow, exactly as if he were ushering her into dinner, and then faded into the woods as expertly as the smugglers. Phoebe gave a ghost of a laugh. Mr. Christmas must surely be the oddest butler in the land.
“Christ, Phoebe! There you are.”
She whipped around, biting back a startled shriek. Only a few hundred feet away, Lucas stalked toward her along the trail. She cast a quick glance through the woods, but Mr. Christmas had vanished.
“Why did you go off like this?” Lucas asked in a stern tone as he came up to her. He looked so big and strong, and so worried, she could not help tumbling thankfully into his arms. Only when he held her close did she fully realize how frightened she had been. She shuddered with relief, leaning into the comforting hardness of his brawny chest.
“Are you all right, my love?” he asked urgently.
“Yes. I . . . I just lost my way.”
He squeezed her a little tighter, and the dog, nestled under her arm, yelped.
“What the—”
“Lucas, be careful,” Phoebe exclaimed as she pulled away. “Do not hurt the poor thing.” She stroked the dog’s ears, soothing him. “I heard him crying in distress. That is why I left the trail.”
He raised his eyebrows as he studied the bedraggled bundle in her arms. The animal gave a pathetic whimper, feathering his tail.
“Good God. He looks like a drowned rat. What do you intend to do with him?”
She scowled. “Take him home, of course, and give him a bath and something to eat. The
poor thing obviously has not had a decent meal in days.”
Lucas cast his gaze toward the heavens, obviously seeking patience. “You’re not intending to keep him, are you?”
She and the dog gazed up at him, both doing their best to look pitiful. “I would like very much to keep him. I never had a dog.”
He sighed. “I’m not sure he really counts as a dog, but I have a feeling you won’t give me much choice in the matter.”
“I would never try to force him or anything else on you,” she said with dignity.
“Really? You must tell me all about that sometime. All right, hand him over. He’s sopping wet and he’s already made a mess of your pelisse.”
“The stains will come out,” she said, happy to hand him over. Her arms were beginning to ache, and all the strains of the day weighed heavily on her.
Lucas tucked the dog under his arm, and the little fellow settled quite comfortably. In fact, he looked ready to drop off to sleep. As they headed back to the main trail, Phoebe did her best to show no sign that a man had just pointed a gun in her face. That task was proving remarkably difficult, since her instincts were prodding her to reveal the truth to her husband.
“I thought I heard voices back there, just before I saw you,” Lucas said. “Were you talking to someone?”
Panic seized her, and she almost stumbled. His free hand shot out to grasp her elbow. “Careful, Phoebe. You don’t want to take a tumble.” He gazed at her, frowning. “Was someone else there?”
“N . . . no, of course not. I was simply talking to the dog. He was very upset and I kept trying to soothe him. You would not fathom how badly he was tangled in the brambles, Lucas. It is a wonder I was able to free him at all.”
Her voice ended on a suspicious quaver. Keeping such a terrible secret, especially from her husband, made her cringe with shame. But she had promised Mr. Weston, and she would keep that promise. She could not bear the thought of Sam losing his remaining parent, and she needed to protect the villagers involved in the ring. And protect Lucas, too, who would go charging full bore after the smugglers if she told him the truth. The idea of what might transpire then made her ill.
“Phoebe, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said brightly. “How are the children? Did they find a proper Yule log?”
She could feel his eyes burning into her. Pinning on a smile, she forced herself to meet his gaze. That did nothing to bolster her courage, since he studied her with a suspicious frown. He looked ready to say something—and that made her heart clutch—but then he seemed to give a mental shrug.
“Yes, they have. A right proper one, as Griffin would say. Speaking of the children, I noticed that a few of the boys were wrapped up in familiar-looking scarves, and if I’m not mistaken at least three of the girls were wearing your shawls, including the one lined with Norwich silk that Annabel gave to you as a wedding present. Did the children make an unauthorized visit to our dressing rooms?” her husband asked sardonically.
This time she did wince. “I had to give them warm clothing, Lucas. They would have been too cold otherwise. You do not really mind, do you?”
“Would you care if I did mind?”
Guilt lanced through her. “Lucas, I—”
He gave her a brief hug. “It’s all right. I only felt a small pang of regret that you picked my best scarves to use. Popham, however, may never recover from the shock.”
Phoebe sighed. “I will find a way to make it up to him.”
“I’m sure you will. Now let’s get you home and out of that wet clothing. I don’t want you catching a chill.”
As they emerged from beneath the canopy of oaks onto the broad expanse of the manor’s lawn, Phoebe resisted the temptation to cast a glance over her shoulder. For now, at least, the forest would keep her secrets.
Chapter 28
Phoebe sneaked a glance at her husband’s profile, half cast in shadow by the fading daylight filtering through the carriage window. The distance from Mistletoe Manor to Belfield Abbey measured a scant ten miles, but for most of the journey an awkward silence prevailed between them. There had been several such awkward silences since yesterday, the product of her guilty conscience and her inability to lie to her husband. For the hundredth time, she cursed the chain of events that had thrown her into contact with the smugglers.
She had managed to avoid a private discussion with Lucas for most of yesterday by taking refuge in the children’s company. But by the time they met for dinner, she could barely look him in the eye. Her guilt seemed to cleave her tongue to the roof of her mouth, and she had eventually fled to the doubtful security of her bedroom, ready to crawl out of her skin with shame. Lucas had come to her bedroom later and pointedly asked if something was bothering her. Praying that she was not making a mistake, she answered in the negative. She had then forestalled any more questions by going up on tiptoe, wrapping her arms about him, and planting an enthusiastic kiss on his skeptical-looking mouth. He had initially seemed a bit startled, but soon got into the spirit. In a trice, he had divested her of her clothing and there had been no more talk for the rest of the night.
But his demeanor the next morning was cool, a sure sign he suspected something was amiss. As she had gone about her morning tasks, organizing and helping the servants to decorate the house with the greens they had collected, she had wracked her brain for a solution to her problems, with the smugglers and with Lucas. As for the first problem, she had concluded Mr. Knaggs was her best hope. With his help, she would confront Mr. Weston and attempt to persuade him to give up his dangerous activities. If he would not, she would have little choice but to tell Lucas. Mayhem would likely ensue, but she could not allow Mr. Weston to continue to put his son’s and other lives in danger.
As to her second problem, she could only hope addressing the first problem would resolve the issues with Lucas. She could not keep lying to him forever. That was no way to build trust in a marriage, especially when the male partner in that marriage had once suffered betrayal at the hands of a faithless woman.
“What troubles you, love?”
Phoebe jerked, startled by Lucas’s deep voice cutting the heavy silence. He had canted his body to stretch his long legs across the floor of the carriage as he studied her with a thoughtful tilt to his head.
“Why . . . why would you ask that?”
“You just sighed. Rather tragically, I thought, as if the whole world were against you.”
Phoebe swallowed. She had best find a timely solution to the whole mess or she would probably blurt out the truth, if for no other reason than she did not possess the internal fortitude to keep lying to her husband. That was a good thing, but right now it felt dreadfully inconvenient.
“I am a bit tired,” she hedged. True enough. After Lucas had made love to her, she had been unable to sleep. It counted as something of a miracle she had been able to rise so early this morning, all things considered. “There is much to accomplish before Christmas Day. I want everything to be perfect when we open the manor to the villagers, the tenant farmers, and their families.”
He snorted. “It will take more than a few days to make Mistletoe Manor anybody’s idea of perfection. But I’ll remind you again that I don’t want you wearing yourself out. I’m sure whatever you do for the locals will be just fine.”
“I want it to be more than just fine, Lucas,” she said earnestly. “I want this to be a truly wonderful Christmas no one will forget.”
“I’m damned sure my purse will remember.”
She had no idea how to respond to that salvo, so she kept silent. She had hoped Lucas would graciously accept the wisdom of opening the house to all comers on Christmas Day, as her grandfather used to do, and as his ancestors had done for generations.
Perhaps not.
She gave him a placating smile, which he did not return. Instead, he eyed her with a narrow gaze. “Phoebe, you do realize you can tell me anything, don’t you?” he asked abruptly. “I will always listen c
arefully to whatever you have to say to me.”
She mentally winced. It was not the listening part she worried about, it was what he would do after he heard.
She forced herself to answer calmly. “Of course I do. And I promise that whenever I have something to tell you, I will.”
The stiffening of his shoulders signaled how little he liked her reply, but it was the best she could do for now. “Are we almost to the abbey?” she blurted out before he could say anything else.
A muscle in his jaw pulsed, but he allowed the deflection. “If you look out the window, you can see it on the rise of the hill.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, grateful that for all his commanding ways her husband had the grace not to push her. His patience, unfortunately, made her own actions seem all the worse. Clamping down hard on her guilt, she leaned across him to peek out the window. He gently wrapped an arm around her waist to support her against the jostling of the carriage, his other hand brushing a stray lock of hair back from her neck. Her heart throbbed as she silently acknowledged that Lucas would always take care of her, no matter what.
She cast him a grateful smile, then looked out the window. The sight that met her eyes drew a gasp from her lips. “What a magnificent building,” she breathed. “Like something out of a fairy tale.”
“Isn’t it just,” he replied sardonically.
Of course. Belfield Abbey was Silverton’s domain, and Lucas could not help but compare it to Mistletoe Manor. And not very favorably, she knew.
She eyed him. “You are not going to make a scene, are you?” she asked in a wary voice.
He snorted. “After the way we almost demolished Annabel’s dining room last Easter, I think Aunt Georgie would murder us both if Silverton and I got into another argument.”
“Thank God,” she said, perhaps a tad too enthusiastically.
He laughed, and the tension between them eased. “I promise to be as meek as a church mouse, my love.”
Phoebe was too busy looking at the massive edifice that loomed at the end of the drive to respond to his teasing. Indeed, she thought it looked more like a castle than her idea of an abbey, with its peaked roofs, high turrets, and scores of windows gleaming with the reflected fire of the setting sun. Lucas had told her portions of Belfield Abbey had been built under the early Tudor kings, and that the estate had been held by a marquess of Silverton for over two hundred years. That fact did not impress her nearly as much as the majesty of the building itself, with its graceful towers, and chimneys reaching up into the darkening sky.
His Mistletoe Bride Page 28
