by Mary Balogh
“He is a young man,” Lady Holt-Barron explained, “and is said to be very personable. He is, of course, one of the most eligible bachelors in England.” She looked archly at Freyja.
And so he would be deemed personable even if he looked like a gargoyle, Freyja supposed.
It took the arrival of someone new—preferably someone titled—to titillate the spirits of these people, Freyja thought with a great inward sigh as they left the Pump Room to return home for breakfast. She had surely made a dreadful mistake in coming to Bath. She would be insane within a fortnight—within a week! But she remembered the alternative—being at Lindsey Hall, awaiting the imminent announcement from Alvesley—and decided that she must somehow bear her exile for at least a month. Besides, it would be unmannerly to leave the Holt-Barrons so soon.
She could not, however, endure another morning of shopping. She made the excuse of some unwritten letters not to accompany Charlotte and her mother and did indeed, as a salve to her conscience, sit down at the escritoire in her room and write to Morgan, her younger sister. She found herself describing what had happened at the inn where she had spent a night on the way to Bath, embellishing the story considerably, though indeed the bare facts were sensational enough in themselves. Morgan would appreciate the humor of it all and could be trusted not to show the letter to Wulfric.
Wulf would certainly not be amused.
It was a lovely day for early September, if a little breezy. Freyja thought wistfully of a ride—the hills beyond Bath were made to be galloped among. But if she sent a servant to hire a horse and waited to have it brought around, Charlotte and her mother might already have returned from their shopping trip before it came and there would be a great deal of fuss over sending a groom with her for protection. She had never been able to endure having servants trailing along behind her while she rode. She decided to walk instead, and set out alone as soon as she had changed, her dark green walking dress swishing about her legs as she strode down the steep hill from the house on the Circus. Her bushy fair hair was confined in a coiffure that was almost tame beneath her feathered hat, which sat jauntily to one side of her head.
She strode through the center of Bath, nodding at a few acquaintances and hoping that by some ill fortune she would not encounter her hostesses and be forced to spend the rest of the morning in the shops with them, took a shortcut through the Abbey churchyard past the Pump Room and the Abbey itself, turned to walk along the river, and then noticed up ahead the very grand Pulteney Bridge, which she had forgotten, since she had not been in Bath for many years. On the other side of the bridge, she remembered now, was the splendidly wide and elegant Great Pulteney Street. And were not Sydney Gardens at the end of that?
She had not intended to walk quite so far, but she felt as if she were drawing air deep into her lungs for the first time in days, and she had no desire to return to the house just yet. She turned to walk across the bridge, looking briefly in the little shop windows as she passed, and then discovered that memory had not deceived her. A short distance ahead of her stretched one of the most magnificent sights of an admittedly magnificent city.
At the end of Great Pulteney Street she turned onto Sydney Place, intending to cross over to the Gardens. But then she noticed the sign indicating that Sutton Street was to her left and frowned and stopped abruptly. It did not take more than a few seconds to realize why that name sounded familiar. It was on Sutton Street that Miss Martin had her school for girls. Freyja hesitated, grimaced, hesitated again, and then struck off firmly along Sutton Street. She even knew the number of the house.
Five minutes later she was standing in a shabby genteel parlor, awaiting the arrival of Miss Martin herself. This was definitely not a good idea, Freyja decided. She had never come here in person before or written—or even allowed her solicitor to use her name.
Miss Martin did not keep her waiting long. She was as pale and tight-lipped and straight-backed as Freyja remembered her. Her dark gray eyes looked as steadily into Freyja's as they had ever looked, but now she dared to look with hostility only barely masked behind civility.
“Lady Freyja.” She inclined her head but did not curtsy. She did not offer a chair or refreshments or express surprise or gratification. She did not point at the door and order her visitor to leave. She merely looked, an expression of polite inquiry in her face.
Well, Freyja thought, she liked the woman the better for it.
“I heard that you had a school here,” Freyja said, masking her own embarrassment with more than usual haughtiness. “I was passing by and decided to call on you.”
Asinine words!
Miss Martin did not dignify them with a reply. She merely inclined her head.
“To see how you did,” Freyja added. “To see if there was anything your school was in need of. Anything I could provide.”
It was amazement that was in Miss Martin's eyes now—and far more open hostility.
“I am doing very well, I thank you,” she said. “I have both paying pupils and charity pupils and several good teachers. I also have a benefactor who has been both kind and generous to me and to my girls. I have no need of your charity, Lady Freyja.”
“Well.” Freyja had taken note of the barely concealed shabbiness of the place and decided that the benefactor was not nearly generous enough. Or that the person acting for the benefactor had different notions than his employer of what adequate funding was. “I thought it worth making the offer.”
“Thank you.” Miss Martin's voice quivered with an emotion her person did not show. “I can only hope that you have changed in nine years, Lady Freyja, and that you have come here out of a genuine goodness of heart rather than out of a malicious hope of finding me desperate and destitute. I am neither. Even without my benefactor's generosity my school is beginning to pay its way. I certainly do not need your assistance—or any further visit from you. Good day. My pupils are missing their history lesson.”
A short while later Freyja was walking in Sydney Gardens, her heart still beating erratically, her ears still ringing from the rebuke and the obvious dislike with which it had been delivered.
It must not be a fashionable time to be here, she concluded with some relief. She passed very few other people as she walked the meandering paths, and no one at all that she knew. This was not, she supposed, the place to be walking without a maid trailing decently along behind. But she had never cared about the proprieties and at this particular moment she was very glad indeed to be quite alone. She sat on a rustic bench for a while, close to an ancient oak, feeling the sunshine on her face and the merest suggestion of autumn in the air, and watching a pair of squirrels foraging around for anything visitors to the park might have left behind by way of food. They were remarkably tame. But she sat very still anyway. She did not want to frighten them away.
She had frightened away a whole string of governesses when she was a girl. She had never taken kindly to being confined, to having to do as she was told, to giving her mind to lessons she found excruciatingly boring, to accepting the authority of insipid gentlewomen. She had been a horror, in fact.
Wulf had always found her governesses other employment after dismissing them or accepting their resignation, and Freyja had never given them another thought. Until, that was, Miss Martin had shown unexpected spirit by walking away from Lindsey Hall—literally walking—her head high, having refused any assistance whatsoever from Wulf.
For once in her life Freyja had been genuinely upset by a governess—an ex-governess, in this particular case. She had tolerated the next one, even though she was the most insipid of all, for the rest of her time in the schoolroom.
It was only by accident that she had heard of Miss Martin again. She had opened a school in Bath, but she was struggling dreadfully and must soon close it down. The story had been told maliciously to Freyja by an acquaintance who had expected her to be delighted. She had not been. She had sought out a solicitor, disabused him of the idea that she needed a man to accompan
y and do business for her, and paid him very well indeed to find Miss Martin, determine the needs of her school, and announce to her that an anonymous benefactor was prepared to answer those needs, provided she could prove to an inspector each year that the education she provided her pupils was up to an acceptable standard.
Since then Freyja had warmed to her unaccustomed role as a carer of deserving humanity and had sent Miss Martin several charity pupils and even one needy teacher, providing all the necessary funding for their keep.
Poor Miss Martin would have an apoplexy if she knew the identity of her benefactor.
And she herself would be mortified indeed, Freyja thought as she absently watched the squirrels, if anyone were to discover her secret softness. For softness it was. Any governess who could not control her charges deserved to be dismissed. And any dismissed governess who was too proud to accept her employer's assistance deserved to starve.
She chuckled softly. How she had liked Miss Martin this morning. How she would have despised her if she had fawned all over her former tormentor.
And then a scream jerked her back to reality—a feminine scream, coming from somewhere down the hill and around a bend in the winding path. Trees hid the screamer from Freyja's view, but there were the distinct sounds of a scuffle, a deep male voice, another less frantic scream, and a high-pitched female voice. The squirrels scampered to the nearest tree and shot up its bark to disappear among branches and foliage.
Freyja surged to her feet. She was female herself. She was small. She had no one with her, not even a maid. She was in a park that seemed almost deserted and was made even more secluded by the hills and trees of which it was composed. It was certainly not the occasion for heroics. Any normal woman in this particular situation would have turned right and hurried away in the opposite direction as fast as her legs would carry her.
Freyja was not any normal woman.
She turned left and strode down the path, almost breaking into a run as she did so. She did not have far to go. As she rounded the bend, a stretch of lawn came into view just ahead. On it stood a great tall beast of a man—a gentleman, no less—clutching a small slip of a serving girl. Her arms were imprisoned against his chest and he was lowering his head with the lascivious intent of claiming his prize—though to complete the process he would doubtless be dragging her off into the bushes within the next few moments.
“Take your hands off her!” Freyja commanded, lengthening her stride. “You uncouth villain. Let her go.”
They sprang apart and turned identically startled faces her way. And then the girl—wise wench—screamed again and made off down the hill as fast as her feet would carry her and did not look back.
Freyja did not slow her pace. She strode onward until she was almost toe-to-toe with the villain, drew back her arm, and punched that assaulter of female innocence in the nose.
“Ouch!” he said, his hand jerking up to cover the offended organ. And then his watering eyes focused on her. “Well, now, I thought I recognized that gentle feminine touch. It is you, is it?”
He was fashionably dressed in a blue riding coat with buff breeches and shining top boots, a tall hat on his head. But with a shock of recognition Freyja noticed the long limbs and perfectly proportioned body, the very blond hair beneath the hat, and the very blue eyes of the man she had last seen diving from her inn window three nights ago. Adonis and devil all rolled into one. She drew an audible breath.
“Yes, it is I,” she said. “And I am sorry in my heart now that I did not reveal your hiding place in the wardrobe to that gray-haired gentleman and abandon you to your fate.”
“No, you are not, are you, sweetheart?” he asked, having the gall to grin at her, watering eyes and reddening nose notwithstanding. “How unsporting of you.”
“You dastardly, cowardly villain,” she said. “You wretched debaucher of innocence. You are beneath contempt. I shall report you and have you run out of Bath and away from the company of respectable people.”
“Will you?” He leaned a little toward her, his eyes dancing with watery merriment. “And whom will you report, my charmer?”
She swelled with indignation. “I shall discover your identity,” she said. “You will not be able to show your face outdoors in Bath again without my seeing you and finding out who you are.”
“Well,” he said, “we both know that you are not a duke's daughter, do we not? Where is your retinue of guardians and hangers-on?”
“You will not divert my attention,” she said severely. “Do you think that any serving girl is yours to take merely because she is a serving girl? And merely because you are too handsome for your own good?”
“Am I?” He grinned again. “I suppose you are in no mood to allow me to explain, are you, sweetheart?”
“I am not your sweetheart,” she said. “And I need no explanation beyond the evidence of my own ears and my own eyes. I heard the girl scream and I saw you with her clutched in your arms, about to have your wicked way with her. I am not stupid.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her with dancing eyes and pursed lips. She was very tempted to punch him again.
“No,” he said, “perhaps not. But are you not afraid that with my wicked will freshly thwarted and my raging appetites left unappeased I may choose to pounce upon you instead?”
“I invite you to try,” she said coldly. “You would, I promise you, return home with more bruises than you would find comfortable.”
“A tempting invitation.” He laughed. “But, of course, you can scream far more loudly than that wench who just escaped my clutches. I think I would be wise not to risk it. Good day to you, ma'am.”
He touched his hand to the brim of his hat, made her a mocking half-bow, and strode at a leisurely, long-legged pace down over the lawn to the path at the bottom.
Freyja was left victor of the field.
Joshua chuckled softly to himself as he strode along. Who the devil was she?
He had thought of her a few times in the last couple of days, every time with amusement. She had looked quite enticingly shapely in her nightgown. Her fair hair, all wild, unconfined waves about her shoulders and down her back, had done nothing to lessen her appeal. Her anger, her boldness, her total lack of self-consciousness or fear, had aroused his interest. Her unexpected refusal to let him call her bluff had won his admiration, even though he would probably have broken his neck going through that window if he had not noticed the ivy just in time.
His first impression this morning had been that she was ugly. Not from the neck down. She was small, but in her well-cut walking dress she had looked quite as shapely as she had the other night. Even her hair, confined decently today beneath her fetching little hat but still managing to look wavy and rather wild, was not unattractive. But her eyebrows were quite incongruously dark in contrast to the almost blond color of her hair, and her nose was prominent, with a bend in it. She had fierce green eyes and an unfashionably dark complexion.
There was nothing delicately feminine about her facial features. She was not beautiful, or even pretty. But she was not ugly either. There was too much character behind those looks for that. If he were to be charitable, he might call her handsome. If he were to be honest, he would call her attractive.
Whoever had taught her to punch had certainly done his job well. If many more of those landed on his nose, Joshua thought ruefully, he might well acquire a bend in it to match her own.
A week in Bath was going to seem endless indeed, he had thought just an hour ago, pleased as he was to see his grandmother again after so long. Yesterday, although he had taken a stroll up to the Pulteney Bridge and back and had gone for a ride, as he had done this morning, and then taken a shortcut from the livery stables back through Sydney Gardens to Great Pulteney Street as he was doing again now, he had spent altogether too long indoors, being sociable to his grandmother's visitors during the afternoon and accompanying her to Mrs. Carbret's private card party in the evening rather than to t
he concert at the Upper Rooms.
It still felt strange to be presented to people as the Marquess of Hallmere even though he had been in possession of the title for longer than six months, and to see the added deference in people's manner once his title had been mentioned.
He had never wanted the title or any of the trappings that had come along with it—least of all Penhallow, the marquess's seat in Cornwall. He had lived there from the age of six to the age of eighteen, and had hated almost every moment of it. The orphaned son of the marquess's brother, he had not been made to feel welcome at his uncle's home. There had been a few visits to his grandmother and to his maternal uncle, Lord Potford, her son, over the years, but he had never complained to them or asked to stay indefinitely—he had been too proud and perhaps too stubborn for that. He had left Penhallow as soon as he was able, though. At the age of eighteen he had begged a local carpenter to take him on as an apprentice, since he had always loved working with wood, and he had moved into the village of Lydmere across the river from Penhallow. He had been happy there for five years, until circumstances had forced him to leave.
The title, Penhallow, and all the emotional burdens he had left behind him in Cornwall felt like a particularly heavy millstone about his neck. He had dismissed his uncle's steward six months ago and installed his own. He read the monthly reports and wrote back with specific instructions when his personal input was needed. Apart from that, he ignored the place. He never wanted to see it again.
He would stay here in Bath for the full week, he decided as he neared his grandmother's house, but not a day longer. He had friends all over the country and now he had ample funds with which to travel—the one aspect of his changed circumstances that he admittedly liked. He would spend the winter moving about the country, staying a week here, two there. He would think about a more permanent occupation when next spring came.
