It was an ordinary teacup to him, milky white porcelain with green leaves drawn all over it.
Miss Northrup snatched it from his hand. She set it on the sideboard with the other cup alongside the matching teapot and then immediately seemed to regret her rudeness. She turned to him. “They belonged to my mother. They are all I have of her.”
Yale had received gut punches that hurt less than her words. He remembered how he’d felt when he’d lost his mother…and then, of course, he was still sorting out his feelings about his father’s death.
He stood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You couldn’t.” She went back to wiping the table, her head bowed, the long braid swinging free over one shoulder in time to her movements.
Concerned, he watched her a second. He didn’t see that the table needed more cleaning. Something was not quite right about her behavior. He’d never really wasted a great deal of time considering the vagaries of women. They had an obvious purpose in his life, one he enjoyed very much, but he didn’t give them much thought.
But something about her quiet behavior bothered him. A small drop of water landed on the table. And then another.
Panic rose inside him. Oh, God, she was crying!
He wished he’d never stepped out of the bedroom. He bloody well should never have left Ceylon. This whole trip was nothing but a disaster—and for what purpose? His pride?
His pride wasn’t worth dealing with a crying woman.
“No, Miss Northrup, don’t cry. Just don’t. Everything will be all right. You can use the money I gave you to buy more teacups.”
They were the wrong words. She began crying harder.
Yale placed his hands on her shoulders. “Here, sit. Sit!” He had to tell her a third time before she finally did as he ordered.
He knelt beside her. “Come, don’t be a goose. Broken teacups aren’t worth tears.”
“You are right,” she said, struggling to bring herself under control.
Tears and red eyes did not become Miss Northrup, yet she looked endearing all the same. He pulled her braid over her shoulder and gave it a pat. Its silky texture surprised him. He liked the feel of it.
“Then what is the problem?” he asked.
“When I married, I was going to take that tea set with me…and it does not really matter because I am never going to marry—” She broke off with a sob and broke down into tears.
Yale didn’t know what to do.
“Miss Northrup, please. Don’t carry on this way.” He started to put his arm around her and then pulled back when he realized it wouldn’t look right if anyone walked in and saw him half-naked and comforting her.
She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m all right. I’m just tired and my life hasn’t been going very well lately.”
“Tell me about it,” Yale said, grasping for anything to make her stop crying.
“Come along. Dry your tears.” He offered her the trailing edge of his sheet.
He was being silly but it worked. She stared at the sheet in his hand, and then laughed. He placed the sheet in her hand, and she did use it.
“Now, what is the problem?” he asked quietly.
“Sproule. My life. Everything.”
“Ahhhhh,” he said sagely. “And what is wrong with your life?”
She glanced at the door and then said in a low voice, as if she were afraid the villagers would hear her, “Sometimes I wish I could fit in, but I don’t. I try, but I don’t have a husband, and I am rather set in my ways, and I like books and ideas…I can’t imagine myself spending the rest of life living with Miss Mabel and Miss Hattie. I think I’d almost rather be dead.”
He covered her small hand with his own, staring into her eyes. “Don’t ever say that. Don’t even think it. No matter how bad life is, it is always preferable to death.”
She studied their hands resting on her leg. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re a man and can go anywhere or do anything you wish. I have no choices. I’m too old to marry. There had been thoughts that the squire’s nephew, Vicar Newell, might offer, but he’s recently married a younger woman with a nice dowry. I don’t blame him, but now they want to move into the vicarage. Whether I like it or not, I have nowhere to go but Miss Mabel and Miss Hattie’s.”
Yale had never stopped to think about the role of women in society. He’d assumed they all wanted to be married—or at least, the respectable ones did. In the Orient, he’d known some bold and dashing Englishwomen who lived by their own rules. They were either extremely wealthy or married to men who let them go their own way.
“Why didn’t your father find a husband for you?” he asked.
She frowned at him. “It’s not that easy. Look at me.”
“I am looking at you. I see nothing wrong with you.” He’d actually spoken the truth. Miss Northrup was no sultry beauty, but she was an attractive woman with a fresh wholesomeness. She also had nice breasts—but he was not going to mention that to her!
“Why do you smile when you say that?” she asked, misinterpreting the reason behind his smile. “Come, Mr. Browne, I’m rather plain.”
“Absolutely not!”
“Yes. But also, I didn’t have time to marry when I was younger. My father needed me. Mother was sick, and he needed someone to care for her and help him with his duties. I understand why a man would wish for a prettier girl than myself. Especially one with fewer commitments.”
“Then he isn’t a man worth having.”
He held her attention now. He drew her hand into his, giving her fingers a reassuring squeeze. “Miss Northrup, sometimes it is possible to have all the things you’ve wished and still be alone. You can even have a family and not feel included.”
She raised her eyes to meet his. “Have you ever been lonely, Mr. Browne?”
Her directness caught him off guard. He answered truthfully. “Aye.”
She nodded as if his response was what she had expected. Actually, she was a very attractive woman, with a pert nose and determined chin. Kissable lips…Of course, a gentleman would never seduce a vicar’s daughter.
But she was the one who broke contact first.
She pulled her hand from his. “Well, I need to find clothes for you.”
He rose to his feet, a bit embarrassed by the direction of his thoughts. He liked Miss Northrup. She’d cried, but she hadn’t clung or expected him to solve her problems. She was a brave woman and he hoped everything worked out for her.
“Perhaps your father had something I could wear?”
Coming to her feet, she shook her head. “You are a good six inches taller than my father. Besides, anything worthwhile I gave to the poor.” She took her cape off a peg on the wall and threw it over her shoulders. She then reached for what had to be the ugliest bonnet he’d ever seen. The black silk material covering it had been faded by the weather. When she set it on her head, she looked like she was wearing a crow.
“Where are you going?” Yale asked.
“I’m going to call on Mr. Sadler and see if he has any cast-offs for you.”
“Cast-offs? You want me to wear the cast-offs of an innkeeper?”
“You sound as offended as a duke. Beggars can’t be choosers, Mr. Browne. Sproule is a small village. If you wish to purchase new clothing, you can do that in Morpeth. But for now, I’ll have to scavenge for breeches and you’ll have to settle for whatever I can find, especially since you are such a tall and brawny man.”
Yale couldn’t help but preen a bit. He liked the way the soft Northern burr in her voice rolled over the words “tall and brawny man.”
“Did you just pay me a compliment, Miss Northrup?”
To his surprise, she smiled.
He’d been right. She was a fetching lass when she smiled. The smile lit her whole face.
“If calling a man too big to make it easy to find breeches for him is a compliment, sir, then that I did.” On those words, she opened the door and left.
C
harmed, Yale went to the window to watch her trudge through the inch or two of crusty snow on the ground. He scratched the growth of beard on his jaw. He hadn’t shaved since he’d left London.
He opened the door, stuck out his head, and shouted, “Don’t forget to bring a razor!”
She waved that she’d heard him.
He shut the door.
Silver gray clouds covered the sky. They were too high to herald more snow. He still felt weak, but was also eager to return to his life in London.
The truth was, he shouldn’t have come back.
Or he should have come back years earlier—while his father was still alive. He could have returned to England three years ago, but he hadn’t felt he had enough money or enough power to properly impress the great duke of Ayleborough…or so he thought.
He looked down at himself. He was a rich man, the owner of his own shipping company, and yet here he stood in a vicarage kitchen in the tiny village of Sproule dressed in nothing more than a sheet.
What a fool he was!
Of course, he could stop in London and see his brother Wayland and his sister Twyla.
He immediately rejected the idea. He could not face them. Not now that their father was dead.
His failure to be at his father’s side in his last hours would be only one more way in which Yale had disappointed his family. Besides, because of the age difference and their separate mothers, they had never been close as family. Wayland and Twyla had always done what had been expected of them. Yale had rebelled.
How many schools had he been sent down from for miscreant behavior? He’d forgotten. He’d also been extremely selfish. The truth was, his father had ignored him, favoring the children from his first marriage over Yale.
And it had hurt. At some point he’d learned that if he acted badly, his father had no choice but to pay attention.
Yale winced at the memories of some of the pranks he’d pulled.
Then there was episode that had gotten him disinherited. He’d been kicked out of school, this time permanently, but instead of returning home to Northumberland, he’d hired a coach and driver.
Even now he smiled at the memory of his younger self, full of self-importance and no small amount of gall, setting himself up as a man on the Town. He’d been all of eighteen. Not one merchant or a matchmaking mama had questioned him.
He’d rented rooms, purchased a horse, had a new wardrobe made, and lived the high life with plenty of women eager for his attentions and a new set of friends to take him around London. In less than six weeks he’d gambled away a small fortune—including the inheritance from his mother.
He stared out the kitchen window. Snow blanketed the graves and headstones. From this angle, he could just see the Ayleborough vault.
His breath made a fog on the window. He touched the cold glass with his finger, remembering that day when his father had come to Yale’s rooms in London and found him passed out drunk, a naked opera dancer at his side.
The duke had been furious. The school had notified him that they had sent Yale home. He’d been worried about Yale’s whereabouts until word had reached him through friends in London.
When his father had confronted him, Yale, hung over and full of pride, had demanded his portion of his inheritance right then and there so he could live his life the way he wished.
That had stopped his father’s lecture.
But to Yale’s surprise, he had agreed.
“It will make a man of you,” he’d said. He’d pulled from his pockets all of Yale’s debts. He’d bought them up and now held the chits in front of Yale.
“Here is your inheritance,” he’d said. “Twenty-seven thousand pounds. Wasted.”
And then he had disinherited his younger son on the spot.
Yale turned from the window. He now knew how hard it was to earn that sum with one’s sweat. He also understood more of the world now.
Back then, he’d been hurt when his new friends had deserted him. Doors that had been open to him had slammed shut the minute notice of his disinheritance had been posted in the Gazette.
He’d gone off to a dockside tavern to get good and drunk. He’d succeeded. He’d also signed on as a crew member of a merchantman.
When he’d come to his senses, the ship was well out to sea. Foolishly, he’d demanded to be released from the contract he’d signed and had been soundly beaten for his rebellion.
It had been the making of him.
He’d stayed with the ship because he’d had no choice—and because he’d rather cut off his own arm than beg his father for forgiveness. When the ship put into port in Naples, a more sober, and somewhat wiser, Yale had found a small church, and there he had made an oath. He vowed he would prove his father wrong. He would not crawl home a broken man like the prodigal son but as a rich man.
In the ensuing years, there had been times he wondered if he would succeed. Life’s lessons were hard.
He’d thought himself a swordsman until he’d found himself battling for his life against Mediterranean pirates. He quickly learned tricks not taught by any London fencing master. And no boxing school could teach him how to brawl the way he’d learned on the mean streets of Algiers and Calcutta.
In time, he’d learned how the world truly measured the worth of a man. His rebelliousness was replaced by a very sincere desire just to stay alive. He’d learned to live in a world where a man’s word was his bond—breaking it could be a death warrant.
The first gold coin he’d earned by his own labor, he’d put in a leather bag that he wore around his neck, lest one of his comrades should steal it. It had taken him almost another full year to earn another. He’d decided there had to be a better way to build his fortune. He’d purchased a few shares in a sailing ship. In a few years, he’d owned the ship.
The keen intelligence that had lain dormant through all his history and Latin lessons now became a powerful weapon, especially in the hands of a man who had to educate himself. He’d asked questions and listened hard.
He’d also learned he had a talent for making money.
But now, it all seemed hollow—the money, the vow, the desire to show his family he was a man.
He sat down in the chair in Miss Northrup’s small kitchen. The brick floor made his toes cold. He curled them up under the sheet and crossed his arms, waiting.
He must have dozed in the warmth by the hearth because when next he knew, a rush of cold air jerked him to consciousness.
It took him a moment to gather his bearings and when he did, he found himself surrounded by a group of angry men. He immediately recognized the innkeeper and the blacksmith with whom he had left his horse upon arriving in Sproule. The blacksmith was carrying the heavy hammer he used to pound metal into horseshoes. The innkeeper held a club. The other men didn’t look any friendlier. The women he’d met earlier poured in the door behind the men. By the set expressions on everyone’s faces, this was obviously not a social call.
“Marvin Browne?” questioned an officious man in drab brown and green hunting clothes and a great wool scarf. He cradled an aged blunderbuss in his arms.
Yale stared at him, refusing to answer.
“Aye, Squire Biggers, that is Marvin Browne,” Mrs. Sadler answered for him. “See? He’s wearing nothing but the bed linens.”
Yale slowly rose from his chair, feeling at a disadvantage with the men looming over him. As he had expected, when he came to his full height, they took a step back—everyone, that is, except Squire Biggers.
“Where is Miss Northrup?” Yale asked.
At that moment, she pushed her way forward from the back of the group. She turned and faced them. “This is ridiculous! I insist you stop immediately!”
Mrs. Sadler spoke. “We told you to stay at the inn, Miss Northrup. We know what we are doing.”
“Someone take her back to the inn,” Squire Biggers ordered. Mr. Sadler moved to obey.
The squire turned his attention back to Yale. He patted his blunderbuss. �
�Mr. Browne, I am also the local magistrate.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Yale replied dryly.
“It’s no pleasure for me, sir,” the squire shot back. “We are all concerned for the reputation of Miss Northrup.”
“Oh, I can’t believe this!” Miss Northrup protested. She’d dug in her heels and wasn’t making it easy for Mr. Sadler to remove her person.
Yale looked Squire Biggers in the eye. “I assure you her reputation is safe. I have done nothing untoward here.”
“Do you call parading yourself naked in front of our women nothing, sir?”
Every man jack of them waited for Yale’s answer, and he knew they wouldn’t believe him, whatever he said. “It was a mistake. They have my sincerest apologies.”
“Oh, it was a mistake, all right,” the squire agreed. “And I have no doubt you’ve been in the company of Miss Northrup without your clothing, too.”
Yale sensed a trap but he didn’t know what kind. “If you have no doubt, then it is futile for me to protest it,” he said cautiously.
“Not as long as you do the right thing, sir.” Squire Biggers laid a loving hand on his blunderbuss.
“The right thing?” Yale asked.
“Aye,” the squire answered. “We expect you to marry her.”
Chapter 5
Hustled to the back of the crowd gathered around her kitchen door, Samantha heard the squire’s words. Her knees buckled beneath her in shock.
Her stumbling caused Mr. Sadler to loosen his hold and she used the opportunity to twist out of his grasp, slip under his arm, and charge back into the house with a ringing, “No!”
She pushed her way past her neighbors to confront the squire angrily. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He didn’t even bother to look at her. “This is none of your affair, missy.”
“None of my affair?” Samantha repeated incredulously. She shot a glance at Mr. Browne to see if he was as disbelieving as she was. He stood, his arms folded against his chest, his face a stone mask. He reminded her of the Sphinx of Ancient Egypt—except that he had the body of Apollo.
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