by Mary Balogh
When she had returned just a week ago, however, it was to the discovery that the work had not even begun. The roofer, when confronted, had explained that he had been waiting for her to come back so that he would know exactly what she wanted—apparently a new roof had not been clear enough. His workers were supposed to be here this week, but so far they had been conspicuous in their absence. She was going to have to send one of the grooms with another letter of complaint.
It was very frustrating, for she had been forced to move into Hardford Hall until the job was done. It was no particular hardship, she kept telling herself. At least she had somewhere to go. And she had always loved Aunt Lavinia. During the first year following her brother’s death, however, it had occurred to Aunt Lavinia that for sheer gentility’s sake she ought to have a female companion. The lady she had chosen was Mrs. Ferby, Cousin Adelaide, an elderly widow, who was fond of explaining in her deep, penetrating voice to anyone who had no choice but to listen that she had been married for seven months when she was seventeen, had been widowed before she turned eighteen, and thus made a fortunate escape from the slavery of matrimony.
For years after her bereavement, Cousin Adelaide had paid supposedly short visits to her hapless relatives, since she had been left poorly provided for, and she had stayed until someone else in the family could be prevailed upon to invite her to pay a short visit elsewhere. Aunt Lavinia had voluntarily invited her to come and live indefinitely at Hardford, and Cousin Adelaide had arrived promptly and settled in. Aunt Lavinia had collected one more stray. She collected them as other people might collect seashells or snuffboxes.
No, it was no great hardship to be forced to stay at the main house, Imogen told herself with a sigh as she turned away from the depressing sight of her roofless house. Except that now, soon, being there was going to become a lot worse, for the Earl of Hardford was coming to Hardford Hall.
That roofer deserved to be horsewhipped.
The new earl was coming for an indeterminate length of time. His title was really not so very new, though. He had been in possession of it since the death of Imogen’s father-in-law two years ago, but he had neither written at the time nor put in an appearance since nor shown any other interest in his inheritance. There had been no letter of condolence to Aunt Lavinia, no anything. It had been easy to forget all about him, in fact, to pretend he did not exist, to hope that he had forgotten all about them.
They knew nothing about him, strange as it seemed. He might be any age from ten to ninety, though ninety seemed unlikely and so did ten, since the letter that had been delivered to Hardford’s steward this morning had apparently been written by the earl himself. Imogen had seen it. It had been scrawled in a rather untidy, though unmistakably adult, hand, and it had been brief. It had informed Mr. Ratchett that his lordship intended to wander down to the tip of Cornwall since he had nothing much else to do for the moment and that he would be obliged if he could find Hardford Hall in reasonably habitable condition. And in possession of a broom.
It was an extraordinary letter. Imogen suspected that the man who had penned it, presumably the earl himself since it bore his signature in the same hand as the letter itself, was drunk when he wrote it.
It was not a reassuring prospect.
In possession of a broom?
They did not know if he was married or single, if he was coming alone or with a wife and ten children, if he would be willing to share the hall with three female relatives or would expect them to take themselves off to the dower house, roof or no roof. They did not know if he was amiable or crotchety, fat or thin, handsome or ugly. Or a drunkard. But he was coming. Wandering suggested a slow progress. They almost certainly had a week to prepare for his arrival, probably longer.
Wandering down to the tip of Cornwall, indeed. In February.
Nothing much else to do for the moment, indeed.
Whatever sort of man was he?
And what did a broom have to do with anything?
Imogen made her way toward the main house with lagging steps despite the cold. Poor Aunt Lavinia had been in a flutter when Imogen left earlier. So had Mrs. Attlee, the housekeeper, and Mrs. Evans, the cook. Cousin Adelaide, quite unruffled and firmly ensconced in her usual chair by the drawing room fire, had been firmly declaring that hell would freeze over before she would get excited about the impending arrival of a mere man. Though that man was unwittingly providing her with a home at that very moment. Imogen had decided it was a good time to walk to the village to pay a call upon Tilly.
But she could delay her return no longer. Oh, how she longed for the solitude of the dower house.
One of the grooms was leading a horse in the direction of the stables, she could see as she approached across the lawn. It was an unfamiliar horse, a magnificent chestnut that she would certainly have recognized if it had belonged to any of their neighbors.
Who . . . ?
Perhaps . . .
But no, it was far too soon. Perhaps it was another messenger he had sent on ahead. But . . . on that splendid mount? She approached the front doors with a sense of foreboding. She opened one of them and stepped inside.
The butler was there, looking his usual impassive self. And a strange gentleman was there too.
Imogen’s first impression of him was of an almost overwhelming masculine energy. He was tall and well formed. He was dressed for riding in a long drab coat with at least a dozen shoulder capes and in black leather boots that looked supple and expensive despite the layer of dust with which they were coated. He wore a tall hat and tan leather gloves. In one hand he held a riding crop. His hair, she could see, was very dark, his eyes very blue. And he was absolutely, knee-weakeningly handsome.
Her second impression, following hard upon the heels of the first, was that he thought a great deal of himself and a small deal of everyone else. He looked both impatient and insufferably arrogant. He turned, looked at her, looked pointedly at the door behind her, which she had shut, and looked back at her with raised, perfectly arched eyebrows.
“And who the devil might you be?” he asked.
* * *
It had been a long and tedious—not to mention cold—journey, most of which Percy had undertaken on horseback. His groom was driving his racing curricle, and somewhere behind them both, in the traveling carriage, came a stoically sulking Watkins, surrounded by so many trunks and bags and cases, both inside and outside the vehicle, that its gleaming splendor must be all but lost upon the potentially admiring lesser mortals it passed on its journey. Watkins would not like that. But he was already sulking—stoically—because he had wanted to add a baggage coach, not in order to spread the load between the coach and the carriage, but in order to double it. Percy had refused.
They were going to be here for a week or two at the longest, for the love of God. It had felt, riding through Devon and then Cornwall, that he was leaving civilization behind and forging a path into the wilderness. The scenery was rugged and bleak, the ever-present sea a uniform gray to match the sky. Did the sun never shine in this part of the world? But was not Cornwall reputed to be warmer than the rest of England? He did not believe it for a moment.
By the time Hardford hove into sight, Percy was more than just bored. He was irritated. With himself. What in thunder had possessed him? The answer was obvious, of course. Liquor had possessed him. Next year he would find a different way to celebrate his birthday. He would pull up a chair to the fire at home, wrap a woolen shawl about his shoulders, prop his slippered feet upon the hearth, set his cup of tea laced with milk beside him, and read Homer—in Greek. Ah, and add in a tasseled nightcap for his head.
Hardford Hall had been built within sight of the sea, a fact that was hardly surprising. Where else could one build in Cornwall? The front-facing rooms, especially those on the uppermost story, would have a panoramic and much-prized view over the vast deep—if those rooms were habitable, that was,
and what he was seeing was not just an empty facade hiding rubble. All the evidence of his eyes suggested that it was not a heap, though. The hall was a solid, gray stone, Palladian sort of structure, more mansion than manor, and though there was ivy on the walls, it looked as though it had been kept under control by some human hand or hands. The house had been built on a slight upward slope, presumably so that it would look impressive. But it was also sheltered from behind and partially on each side within the arms of a rock face and trees and what were probably colorful rock gardens during the summer. Its positioning thus probably saved it from being blown away by the prevailing winds and set down somewhere in Devon or Somerset. The wind did seem to be an ever-present feature of this particular corner of Merry England.
There were rugged sea cliffs well within sight, but at least the house was not teetering off the edge of them. It was some considerable distance back, in fact. And as far as he could see, the house was surrounded by a walled park, which, like the ivy, appeared to have been kept in decent order. Someone had scythed the grass before the onset of winter and trimmed the trees. There were flower beds empty of flowers, of course, but also empty of weeds. It looked as if a line of gorse bushes, instead of a wall, separated the park from the cliffs.
By the time he rode onto the terrace of the house and waited for the groom who had poked his head out of the stable block to come and lead his horse away, Percy was hopeful that at least he would not have to spend the rest of the day sweeping cobwebs. Perhaps he really did have a staff here—a housekeeper, anyway. There was, after all, at least one groom outside, and there must be a gardener or two. Perhaps—dare he hope?—there was even a cook. Perhaps there was even a fire in one of the rooms. And indeed, a glance upward toward the roof revealed the welcome sight of a line of smoke emerging from one of the chimneys.
He strode up the steps to the front doors. The steps had been swept recently, he could see, and the brass knocker had been polished. He disdained to make use of it, however, but turned both doorknobs, discovered that the doors were unlocked, and stepped inside—to a pleasingly proportioned hall with black-and-white tiles underfoot, heavy old furniture of dark wood that had been polished to a shine standing about, and old portraits hanging on the walls in their heavy frames, the most prominent of which depicted a gentleman in a large white wig, heavily embroidered skirted coat, knee breeches with white stockings, and shoes with rosettes and high red heels. Four sleek hunting dogs were arranged in a pleasing tableau about him.
A former earl, he assumed. Perhaps one of his own ancestors?
For a few moments the hall remained empty, and Percy found himself feeling relief that the place was obviously clean and well cared for, but also mystification as to why. For whom exactly were house and grounds being kept? Who the devil was living here?
An elderly gray-haired man creaked into the hall from the nether regions. He might as well have had the word butler tattooed across his forehead. He could not possibly be anything else. But—a butler for an empty house?
“I am Hardford,” Percy said curtly, tapping his riding crop against the side of his boot.
“My lord,” the butler said, inclining his body forward two inches or so and creaking alarmingly as he did. Corsets? Or just creaky old bones?
“And you are?” Percy made an impatient circling motion with his free hand.
“Crutchley, my lord.”
Ah, a man of few words. And then a mangy-looking tabby cat darted into the hall, stopped in its tracks, arched its back, growled at Percy as though it had mistaken itself for a dog, and darted out again.
If there was one thing Percy abhorred, or rather one class of things, it was cats.
And then one of the front doors opened and closed behind his back, and he turned to see who had had the effrontery to enter the house by the main entrance without so much as a token rap upon the knocker.
It was a woman. She was youngish, though she was not a girl. She was clad in a gray cloak and bonnet, perhaps so that she would blend into invisibility in the outdoors. She was tall and slim, though it was impossible with the cloak to know if there were some curves to make her figure interesting. Her hair was almost blond but not quite. There was not much of it visible beneath the bonnet, and not a single curl. Her face was a long oval with high cheekbones, largish eyes of a slate gray, a straight nose, and a wide mouth that looked as though it might be covering slightly protruding teeth. She looked a bit as though she had stepped out of a Norse saga. It might have been a beautiful face if there had been any expression to animate it. But she merely stared at him, as though she were assessing him. In his own home.
That was his first impression of her. The second, following swiftly upon the first, was that she looked about as sexually appealing as a marble pillar. And, strangely enough, that she was trouble. He was not used to dealing with females who resembled marble pillars—and who walked unannounced and uninvited into his own home and looked at him without admiration or blushes or any recognizable feminine wiles. Though blushes would have been hard to detect. Both cheeks plus the end of her nose were a shiny red from the cold. At least the color proved that she was not literally marble.
“And who the devil might you be?” he asked her.
She had provoked the rudeness by walking in without even the courtesy of a knock on the door. Nevertheless, he was unaccustomed to being rude to women.
“Imogen Hayes, Lady Barclay,” she told him.
Well, that was a neat facer. If it had come at the end of a fist, it would surely have put him down on the floor.
“Am I suffering from amnesia?” he asked her. “Did I marry you and forget all about it? I seem to recall that I am Lord Barclay. The Viscount of, to be exact.”
“If you had married me,” she said, “which, heaven be praised, you have not, then I would have introduced myself as the Countess of Hardford, would I not? You are the earl, I presume?”
He turned to face her more fully. She had a low, velvety voice—which overlay venom. And her teeth did not protrude. It was just that her upper lip had a very slight upward curl. It was a potentially interesting feature. It might even be a beguiling feature if she were beguiling. She was not, however.
He was not accustomed to feeling animosity toward any woman, especially a young one. It seemed he was making an exception in this woman’s case.
Understanding dawned.
“You are the widow of my predecessor’s son,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“I did not know he had one,” he explained. “A wife, I mean. A widow now. And you live here?”
“Temporarily,” she said. “Usually I live in the dower house over there.” She pointed in what he thought was roughly a westerly direction. “But the roof is being replaced.”
His brows snapped together. “I was not informed of the expense,” he told her.
Her own brows stayed up. “It is not your expense,” she informed him. “I am not a pauper.”
“You are spending money on a property that presumably belongs to me?” he asked her.
“I am the daughter-in-law of the late earl,” she said, “the widow of his son. I consider the dower house mine for all practical purposes.”
“And what will happen when you remarry?” he asked her. “Will I then be asked to reimburse you for the cost of the roof?”
And why the devil was he getting into this when he had scarcely set foot over the doorstep? And why was he being so abominably ungracious? Because he found marble women offensive? No, not plural. He had never met one before now. Her eyes, potentially lovely, were absolutely without warmth.
“It will not happen,” she told him. “I will not remarry and I will not ask for a return of my money.”
“Will no one have you?” Now he had gone plummeting over the edge of civility. He ought to apologize abjectly and right now. He scowled at her instead. “How ol
d are you?”
“I am not convinced,” she said, “that my age is any of your concern. Neither is the list of my prospective suitors or lack thereof. Mr. Crutchley, I daresay the Earl of Hardford would like to be shown to his apartments to wash the dust of travel off his person and change his clothes. Have the tea tray brought up to the drawing room in half an hour, if you please. Lady Lavinia will be eager to meet her cousin.”
“Lady Lavinia?” He drilled her with a look.
“Lady Lavinia Hayes,” she explained, “is the late earl’s sister. She lives here. So, at present, does Mrs. Ferby, her companion and maternal cousin.”
His eyes drilled deeper into her. But there was not the smallest possibility that she was teasing him. “Not at the dower house when it sports a roof?”
“No, here,” she said. “Mr. Crutchley, if you please?”
“Follow me, my lord,” the butler said just as Percy heard the rumble of wheels approaching outside. His curricle, he guessed. For a brief moment he considered bolting through the door and down the steps and vaulting aboard with the command on his lips that his groom spring the horses, preferably in the direction of London. But it would be a shame to leave his favorite horse behind.
He turned instead to follow the butler’s retreating back. Watkins and the baggage would be awhile, yet. Lady Barclay and Lady Lavinia Hayes and Mrs. Ferby would have to take him in all his dusty glory for tea.
Three women. Marvelous! A sure cure for boredom and all else that ailed him.
