Slightly Sinful

by Mary Balogh

  Alleyne winced inwardly. They were all going to find themselves back on the road today, turned away from Chesbury Park with a boot at their rear end, if they were not very careful.

  Flossie laughed, a demure titter in total contrast to her usual hearty mirth when she was amused.

  “You do not need to have a long acquaintance with my sister-in-law,” she said, “in order to learn that she has a passion for cooking, my lord. Colonel Leavey keeps his own cook when he is at home, but the poor woman usually ends up idle. Phyllis cannot resist spending her days in the kitchen. She is quite intolerant of anyone else’s cooking but her own. And it certainly is superior, I must say.”

  The baron sighed.

  “I have been somewhat off my food lately,” he told them, “but even so I have realized that the food with which my cook presents me leaves much to be desired. Finding a replacement for her here in the country might prove difficult, though. But I cannot have a guest of mine working in my kitchen, ma’am.”

  “Believe me, my lord,” Phyllis said, “it will give me the greatest pleasure. I shall go there immediately and look over the menus for today. I daresay I will wish to make some changes.”

  She got to her feet, looking pleased and eager and pretty.

  Flossie got up too and gazed down at the baron as she twirled her parasol over her head. “It was kind of you to bring us out here, my lord,” she said, “but you really ought to go inside to rest now, especially if there are to be visitors to entertain this afternoon. I will walk back to the house with you. I have some letters to write if you would be so good as to direct me to paper, pen, and ink.”

  She took Weston’s arm when he stood and the two of them moved off along the path in perfect amicable accord with each other.

  Phyllis hung back.

  “Poor, dear gentleman,” she said when he was out of earshot. “He is being taken advantage of quite shamefully, Mr. Smith. It sounds as if the stables are in bad shape, and the gardens certainly are. Gerry says that the cook is into the gin, and that the housekeeper is into the gin and the port and scarcely comes out of her room. And the butler is one of those doddering old fools who has no control whatsoever over his staff.”

  “I have no doubt,” Alleyne said with a grin, “that between you and Geraldine, you will put at least some matters right in the kitchen, Phyllis. My stomach, I must confess, has protested the fare that has been served here so far, though a guest ought not to complain.”

  “You can expect a tasty luncheon,” she promised. “Heads are going to roll when I step into the kitchen, Mr. Smith. I have all the weight of the colonel’s authority behind my name.” Her laughter was full of mischief.

  Alleyne chuckled to himself as he watched her go. Flossie was already assisting the baron up the steps. They were a priceless pair and were apparently enjoying themselves immensely. And there were to be visitors during the afternoon, were there? They were all to be drawn deeper and deeper into deception, then. Well, there was no point in regretting any of it now. They were in deep, and as someone in literature had once said—Macbeth?—going back would be as difficult now as moving onward.

  He sat down on the vacated seat. He had intended to find the steward and request a tour of the home farm, but perhaps he would wait until another day and be with Rachel when the visitors arrived. Besides, Strickland was already making his mark on the stables and Phyllis was invading the kitchen. He must be careful that his own interest in the estate could not be construed as interference.

  But he was interested. He could not help remembering what he had said to Rachel earlier—he must have grown up on a country estate. This sort of life seemed bred into his bones. And he must surely have loved the land. Gazing about him now, he felt that he could almost weep at the pull of it all on his emotions after the few weeks he had spent in Brussels and then on the journey here.

  Was he a younger son? Was he a military officer? How disconnected he must surely have felt, unable even to consider remaining on the land that was not his, but his father’s and then an elder brother’s. How had he dealt with his feelings? Had he been sullen, ungracious, resentful? He could not quite picture himself that way, but how could he know? Might memory loss entail personality change too? Had he suppressed his feelings, then, been restless and unfulfilled? Had he hated the army? Or pretended to himself that he loved it? Or simply made the best of it? Or—if indeed he had never been an officer—had he wandered through life aimlessly? Had he been able to afford to do so?

  Perhaps, if his memory never returned and he could never find his family, he would take employment as a steward. Perhaps he had been a steward. It was a gentleman’s position, after all, and though he was sure he must be a gentleman, he did not know how high on the social scale he had been. Perhaps employment had always been an imperative for him. But what would a steward have been doing wandering about the Forest of Soignés while the Battle of Waterloo was in progress, a musket ball in his thigh?

  He envied Rachel and Flossie their letter-writing activity this morning. Letter writing was perhaps not something he usually enjoyed, but perversely he wished now that there were someone—anyone—to whom he could write. Was he the one who had written that letter that kept appearing in his dreams? he wondered. Or had someone written it to him? Or—a possibility he had not yet considered—had it been written neither by nor to him? Perhaps he had been merely a messenger.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture the scenario. By whom? To whom? And what was his involvement?

  The familiar headache niggled behind his eyes.

  He was almost thankful to see Bridget and Rachel out in the garden when he opened his eyes again. He got to his feet to greet their approach.

  Rachel had changed into a light sprigged-muslin day dress. Alleyne remembered with some discomfort that he had kissed her again out at the cascades. He had promised himself that he would not do anything like that again. He had covered up his mistake with a reasonable-sounding excuse, of course, but really he had not intended to do it at all. It was just that she seemed to shine more brightly than ever in this country setting. And—deuce take it!—they had laughed together over her antics on the horse like a couple of carefree children, and she had seemed well nigh irresistible.

  He had not suggested bringing her here to Chesbury in order to find her irresistible. He wanted to be free when he left here. He had no way of knowing what sort of baggage and emotional tangles he had left behind him when his memory went and that he would rediscover when it came back. He certainly did not need any new entanglement.

  She was not wearing a bonnet, he noticed. Her hair was gleaming like pure gold in the sunlight. Bridget had a long, shallow basket over one arm. She looked very much younger than she had appeared in Brussels, with her brown hair and her straw bonnet and relaxed smile. She really was pleasantly good-looking, though she must be well past thirty.

  “I am going to cut some blooms to brighten up the house, Mr. Smith,” she called when they came within earshot. “Do sit back down and Rachel will join you. You really ought to keep off that leg as much as possible.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning at her and waiting for Rachel to seat herself before taking his place beside her. “Are you sure you can distinguish between the flowers and the weeds?”

  “There are rather a lot of weeds,” she said, looking critically along the parterres. “What I ought to have brought out with me was a hoe. I would love to have a good go at this garden. It is a disgrace.”

  “It looks perfectly fine to me, Bridget,” Rachel said.

  “That is because you grew up in town, my love,” Bridget told her.

  “And you did not?” Alleyne asked her.

  “I did not,” she said. “I grew up in a parsonage, Mr. Smith. My father was a parson, but as poor as could be. And there were seven of us. I was the eldest. I loved nothing better than helping my mother in the garden—the flowers in the front, the vegetables in the back. There is no lovelier feeling in this lif
e than to have one’s fingers in the soil. I think I might have married Charlie Perrie if his house had had a garden and a few chickens and maybe a pig, even though he did not have a humorous or a generous bone in his body. But he didn’t and so I went to London to seek my fortune when I was sixteen. I was the happiest girl in the world when Mr. York took me on as nurse to Rachel, and the job lasted six whole years. I am not complaining about my life since then, but having a garden is my idea of heaven. If we ladies can ever afford our boarding house, it is going to have to have a big garden. And a big kitchen for Phyll. But I am talking too much. I am going to cut some flowers now.”

  She moved farther along the parterre before bending to cut some.

  “Was it Bridget who taught you to read?” he asked Rachel.

  “I think it must have been my mother who did that,” she said. “Or perhaps my father. He liked to read and was a very well-educated man. He used to read to me when I was very young.”

  “What was your life like?” he asked her.

  She thought for a while. “I think I must have been very close to my mother,” she said. “I know that I had terrible tantrums for a while after poor Bridget came—to take her place, as I thought. But I soon grew to love her like a mother—such is the fickleness of childhood. I was unhappy after she left, and gradually things grew worse with my father’s gaming and drinking. I did like being the lady in charge, though, responsible for the running of our household, and I believe I did well at it. I learned to be frugal and to put things away during the good times to help us through the bad. But for the last few years the bad times were almost constant. I loved my father, and I will always treasure the memories of the times when he loved me cheerfully and generously and when he allowed himself to be loved. Those times too grew sparse toward the end of his life.”

  “You never went to school?” he asked her.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “You had friends?” he asked.

  “A few.” She looked down at her hands. “We had some good neighbors who have remained my friends to this day.”

  She had been a lonely, deprived child, Alleyne thought, gazing at her profile through narrowed eyes. And for many years after Bridget left she had been starved for love, he guessed. And for friends. But she had made the best of her situation. She was not a whiner.

  He had done the wrong thing, he thought. Instead of jumping into this lark like a gleeful schoolboy, he ought to have pressed his first idea on her more forcefully. This was where she ought to be living permanently—Miss York of Chesbury Park. He was beginning to have serious doubts about her assessment of Weston.

  She turned her head to look at him.

  “It was not a bad life,” she said. “I do not want to give the impression that my father was cruel to me or even neglectful, or that I hated him. He was not and I did not. He was sick, I believe. He could not stop himself from ruining us both. And then he caught a seemingly harmless chill and died within three days.”

  “I am sorry,” he said.

  “I am not.” She smiled rather tightly. “His life had become something of a torment to him. And to me.”

  But she bit her upper lip even as she said it and looked down sharply to hide her tears from his eyes. He saw one plop onto the back of her hand. He resisted the impulse to set an arm about her shoulders. She would not thank him for his pity.

  “And now you believe that your jewels can solve all your problems,” he said, “and enable you to live happily ever after.”

  She looked up sharply at him, tears still swimming in her eyes.

  “No, of course I do not!” she cried, and she jumped to her feet and glared down at him. “Money will not bring back Papa and make him the way he used to be or the way he must have been when Mama first met and fell in love with him. Money will not make me happy. I am not stupid, Jonathan. But it is only people who have plenty of money who can despise it. To the rest of us it is important. It can at least put food in our stomachs and clothes on our back, and it can at least feed our dreams. You must be from a wealthy background or you would never have said what you just did say. And you are very like my father, I believe. You are a gamer. It just so happened that the last time you played, when we were in Brussels, luck was on your side and gave you enough money that at the moment you can be careless about it. Next time you may not be so fortunate.”

  “Rachel,” he said, leaning forward and trying to possess himself of one of her hands, “I did not mean my words quite like that.”

  She snatched her hand away.

  “Oh, yes, you did,” she said. “People always say they did not mean it when they know they have offended someone. How else could you have meant your words? I come of an improvident father and have always lived off my wits—that is what you think. And if I can only get my hands on my jewels, you think, I will squander the whole fortune as my father always squandered his winnings and will soon be a pauper again. Besides, I am only a woman. That is what you are thinking, is it not? What can women know about planning and spending wisely?”

  “Rachel,” he said, “you presume to know a great deal about my thoughts. But I am sorry I spoke so carelessly. I really am sorry.”

  What he had meant was that she needed far more than money. She needed family and friends. She needed to belong somewhere. She needed to find love, or to let love find her. Not sexual love, necessarily, though she would doubtless find that too in time. She needed a home. She needed Chesbury and Weston, except that she had been too stubborn after her father’s death to see it, and now she had got herself into a nasty situation that might make any real reconciliation with her uncle nearly impossible.

  That was his fault, of course, damn it.

  What he had meant was that there was probably a greater treasure here for her than her jewels. And Weston was as lonely and as much in need of family as she was.

  But he had, Alleyne admitted to himself, expressed himself clumsily. And he was the one who had thought of this underhand scheme to get her jewels early.

  “No,” she said, “you are not sorry. Men never are. They rule the world, and women are merely foolish creatures and quite incapable of knowing what will bring them happiness. I know you do not want to be here even though you were the one who suggested we come like this, pretending to be what we are not. Well, now you are stuck with being here for a whole month. I do not care a fig what you think of me or my continued wish to have my own fortune in my own keeping. I do not care.”

  He got to his feet without the aid of his cane. She was very upset, he could see—far more so than his provocation would account for. His guess was that the reality of being here at Chesbury Park was far different than what she had imagined. And he was feeling devilishly guilty over that.

  “Perhaps,” he said, not for the first time, “we should put an end to this whole charade, Rachel. I’ll explain things to your uncle, the ladies can go off to reorganize their lives in their own way, and you can stay here to live.”

  “Oh, yes!” she cried. “It is just what you would suggest now that the novelty of this lark has worn off. You would leave me here where I am not wanted and where I do not want to be, and you would force me to abandon my dearest friends to a life that is insufferable even to think of. Well, it is not going to happen, and that is that.”

  She reached out a hand and shoved him in the chest. It was not a hard shove, but she caught him off balance as he held some of the weight off his left leg. He toppled awkwardly and inelegantly backward and crashed down onto the seat.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “And now look what you have made me do,” she said crossly. “I have never in my life knocked anyone over.”

  “I daresay I have never been knocked over,” he said. “But I suppose I deserved it. I did not choose my words with care, something I will remember the next time I want to be kind to you when you are as prickly as a hedgehog.”

  “Kind!” she said scornfully. “And I am not prickly.”

  B
ut before she could quarrel more with him, Bridget came dashing up, her basket laden with blooms.

  “Whatever happened?” she asked. “Did you fall, Mr. Smith? I warned you—”

  “Merely a lovers’ tiff, Bridget,” Alleyne said, grinning and feeling rather foolish. “Our first. It was entirely my fault, of course. Rachel knocked me over.”

  “This all seemed such a brilliant idea back in Brussels,” Rachel said. “Everyone thought it would be great good fun. And so it is, and so it will continue to be. I think Uncle Richard is dying.”

  She caught up her flimsy skirt after uttering this apparent non sequitur, whisked herself about, and half ran along the path back to the house. Alleyne would have gone after her, but Bridget set a hand on his sleeve.

  “Let her go,” she said. “I can remember the time when she used to cry inconsolably for her mother every night. And I can remember when her lovely porcelain doll was smashed to pieces by one of Mr. York’s doltish friends. She wrapped up the pieces in an old blanket and cried over them every night. But it was her uncle she wept for. He had come like a ray of sunlight into her life after her mother died, and he had bought her that doll. Then he disappeared as abruptly as he had come. She got over it all within that first year, and after that she was a girl of remarkable spirit and resilience. But now I wonder if she got over it at all. She hates Lord Weston. But what I think is that she won’t admit to herself that she still wants desperately to love him. He is her mama’s brother—her only link with her roots.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Alleyne said with a sigh, “it is what I think too, Bridget. And look at the scrape I have got her into.”

  “Never you mind,” she said. “It will all work out, you just wait and see.”

  Alleyne wished he felt her confidence.

  CHAPTER XIV