“What social engagement could you possibly have?” said Haro. He would have added the phrase, “you young twit!” if his betrothed had not been present. “You said it yourself—we’re in mourning. I doubt you’ve accepted any invitations to join a shooting party or dance a reel that weekend.”
Torin swallowed and laid his fork down with a clatter. “My old tutor Mr. Swaine has invited me to stay with him in Dorchester.”
“I’m sure you can easily send him a note and change your visit to another date.” Arabella raised her perfect eyebrows and gave Torin a chilly stare.
“I’m sure you can just as easily change your wedding to another date!”
“Torin!” Lady Anglesford, who had recovered her spirits enough to descend for dinner, looked in need of her hartshorn once more.
“Mind your words,” said Haro, with a hint of menace in his voice. With his easygoing nature, it was easy to forget that he was half a head taller than everyone in the room, weighed fourteen stone or more, and could knock a man down—especially one as slight as Torin—without much exertion.
“No need to take offense on my account, darling.” Arabella placed a hand gently on Haro’s wrist, her supposedly conciliatory words causing the divide between the two brothers to grow even deeper. “If Torin cannot change his visit, then he cannot. I’m sure we will all be sad to have him absent, but then, his presence is hardly essential to the ceremony, is it?”
A piece of jellied eel fell from Torin’s fork onto his plate.
“Hardly essential?” Eda’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “I’m sure Haro would wish Torin to stand up with him.”
“There are certainly plenty of acceptable gentlemen who would be willing to fulfill that task.” Arabella turned to Haro. “Isn’t Guy Pontipale a particular friend of yours?”
Haro’s nose wrinkled involuntarily. “A friend, perhaps. Though not exactly a particular one.”
“That fellow who introduced you two?” Hastings nodded. “He’ll do.”
And so the question of Haro’s best man was decided.
Arabella, however, was not finished with the conversation. “And, of course, if you wish to go straight to Oxford from this Mr. Swaine’s house, you’ll be nearly there. Such a fortuitous proximity.”
Torin was taken aback. “Must you keep harping on about that? What difference does it make to you whether I go to Oxford or not?”
“It would make things a little less crowded, don’t you think? They say that newlyweds need a little space of their own, and there are”—she glanced around the table—“so many of you.”
“Yes,” snorted Eda. “It’s a pity that Lady Anglesford decided to have as many brats as a fishwife from Billingsgate. Haro, Torin….” She counted on her fingers. “Why, I do believe that’s all of them.”
“Oh, but you must not forget to count yourself, dear Eda.” Arabella smoothed a hand over her pale pink dress. “I daresay you take up as much room in the family as any daughter. Perhaps more.”
“A pity you can’t pack me off to Oxford along with Torin!”
“Pack you off to Oxford?” Arabella trilled in laughter. “Certainly not. I don’t think it would suit you, nor you it. There are other places far more appropriate to house unmarried ladies with no prospects.”
Haro’s eyes darted quickly to Eda, on tenterhooks to see what response she would have to that jibe. To his surprise, however, no words issued from her mouth. Her face looked as motionless as an alabaster statue and her dark blue eyes as hard as glass.
11
Eda had barely shut her bedroom door behind her before the tears came—thick, fast, angry, and heartbroken. Dinner tonight had been intolerable. To hold a wedding while the family was still in mourning for Uncle Edward? It was more than insensitive—it was inhuman. And for Haro to agree to it? Eda snatched up a pillow from the bed and began to beat it with her fists.
She had expected Arabella to turn on her when she stood up for Torin at the table, but she had not been prepared for the concentrated power of the venom that dripped from Arabella’s fangs. If Arabella would turn Torin out of doors, she certainly would not stop from ousting Eda. It was a thought she could not even bear to dwell on.
After dinner, the ladies had retreated to the drawing room while the men quaffed their port. Lady Anglesford had talked incessantly. Eda suspected her aunt was terrified of what her headstrong niece or her future daughter-in-law might say to each other and wanted to allow no opportunity for them to exchange words.
Arabella, however, seemed to prefer to save her cutting wit for Haro’s presence. She spotted an old book on the table that Torin had left out and sat on the sofa intensely engrossed in its pages.
Eda casually glanced over to see the name on the cover of the volume—De Architectura, by Vitruvius. Just the title made her loathe Arabella even more. Previously, she had enjoyed imagining her as too vapid for anything more than a Mrs. Radcliffe novel, but now it seemed she had intelligence as well as money…as well as Haro.
There had been another scene when the gentlemen had rejoined them. Torin spotted his book immediately and saw that Arabella had dog-eared two or three of the pages. It was an action amounting to sacrilege in his code of ethics, and he had laid into her like a broadside from one of Admiral Nelson’s frigates.
“Oh, fustian!” Haro had said, taking Arabella’s part. “You obviously don’t care enough about the book to put it away properly, so why should you care about a few bent corners?”
Torin had retired in a rage, and Eda had slipped away soon afterwards, taking out her spleen on the embroidered pillow instead of on Miss Hastings…or her cousin.
Her aunt’s lady’s maid knocked on the door to help her dress for bed, and she tried to compose herself enough to keep from embarrassing a servant.
“I beg your pardon, Stamford,” she said, wiping away a stream of tears that refused to stop running.
“Oh, don’t be afraid of a few tears,” clucked the plump, blond dresser. She unfastened Eda’s black dress and took it over to the wardrobe. “Her ladyship did warn me that you might not be yourself.”
At the beginning of the season, her aunt had asked if she would like her own lady’s maid—a French one, perhaps, as was the fashion. But Eda, who preferred simplicity in her toilette, had declined, continuing to borrow the offices of Alice Stamford, her aunt’s maid, as she had when she was not yet out of the schoolroom. Eda frequently dressed her own hair, but it was essential to have someone help her lace and unlace her dresses in the back. Although if Arabella had her way, she would be in a horrible hobble without a maid altogether.
Stamford did not linger, and Eda, now dressed in her nightgown, took down her hair herself, shaking out the black curls. Thankful that the scullery maid had built up a large fire in the grate, she slipped beneath the thick bedclothes and tried to sleep.
The events of the day kept arising in her mind, however—images of Haro’s arm wrapped around Arabella’s body, the sound of Arabella’s tittering laugh as she said the word “Oxford.”
She rolled over onto her back. What was it that people said? “He who marries in haste repents at leisure.” Haro was making a mistake he’d soon be regretting. Someone needed to tell him, before it was too late….
***
Haro was interrupted once again after retiring to his bedchamber that night. It was beginning to become a pattern, and an annoying one at that. At the sound of the gentle tap, he swung his legs crossly over the side of the bed and—without even bothering to put on his dressing gown—threw open the door. “Now, see here, Uncle Harold! It’s dashed late—”
The visitor in the hallway was most definitely not Uncle Harold, and before Haro could protest, his room had been invaded. He stared openmouthed. It was Eda, although a version of Eda that he had never seen before. Her long black tresses tumbled wildly about her shoulders, and she was not only missing her black dress but also her petticoat and her stays. The thin, white fabric of her nightdress was the only
thing that kept her from being unclad entirely.
“Good Lord! It’s cold in here!” she uttered matter-of-factly, setting her candle down on a small table near the door. “Why did you not have the servants light a fire when you retired?”
“If you had troubled to put on some more clothes before visiting me, you might not have found things so chilly.” He averted his eyes.
She looked down, as if she had all of a sudden realized that she was not in fact dressed. “If you were a gentleman, you would give me your dressing gown.”
“If you were a lady, you would already be wearing one.” He snatched up the article in question and tossed it to her—then watched a little bit disappointedly as she drew it on to cover her lace-edged nightdress and tightly belted it around her small waist. “What do you want, Eda? You oughtn’t be here, you know.”
“Oughtn’t I?” she asked, a devilish little smile playing over her red lips. She sat down defiantly in the armchair that Uncle Harold had occupied on the previous night. “I thought it would be as good a time as any other to have a little tête-à-tête.” She took a deep breath. “I see you’ve been becoming better acquainted with your betrothed.”
“Yes,” said Haro, seating himself cautiously on the Roman couch across from her. “I hope that you will as well, and indeed, the whole family since she is to be one of us.”
“All in good time. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you disport yourself with her all day. And I suspect you were possibly even friendlier than becomes a gentleman with your darling Arabella on your drive this morning.”
Haro, afflicted with the misfortune of very fair skin, flushed red to the roots of his hair. “Who told you that?” Nothing too improper had happened among the trees….
“Never you mind!” She leaned forward with a flash of intensity, and Haro’s dressing gown, which was far too big for her, gaped open in the front revealing a flash of fair skin below her neck. “And you’ve set a wedding date.”
“So it seems.” Haro was determined to tread cautiously…and to keep his eyes from wandering below her face.
“Perhaps it’s time then to start exerting yourself a little—let the new Lady Anglesford know who is lord and master here.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“What do I mean? If you weren’t blind and besotted, you would know that she’s vexing us all to no end. I’ll say nothing about myself. But your mother’s made herself ill worrying about the changes that chit will make to the house, and you saw what happened with Torin tonight. He’s likely to do something rash if she doesn’t stop ordering him about like a trained poodle.”
“What are you suggesting that I do?”
“You must say something! You must make her mind you!”
Haro recalled how his resolve to do just that today had fizzled out like a torch in the rain. “I don’t know how necessary that is—”
“Well, if you don’t know, then you’re a fool. You’re handing your title to Hastings on a mother-of-pearl platter, and you’re handing your manhood to his daughter with permission for her to trample it.”
“Oh, come now!” She had set up his back now, and he refused to admit that she was right. “I will conduct myself with Arabella as I see fit.”
“Very well then. Do as you like. Although you should know that a woman likes a man who has a little backbone underneath his coat from Weston’s.” Her eyes flicked disdainfully over the open front of his nightshirt. Haro suddenly felt self-conscious, realizing that he was as dishabille as she was.
“If matters continue in this way, then I warn you—I will no longer be able to continue using my best behavior towards her.”
“Best behavior? Is that what you’ve been using up until now?”
“Yes.” Her chin jutted out defiantly. She stood up, and he followed suit. The sitting area in Haro’s room was small, and they were very nearly face to face in the dim room. “My father was an Irishman and a soldier, Haro. I’m not afraid of a brawl.” She picked up her candle, casting a warm glow over her face and fine collarbones.
Haro could not help admiring the flash in her eyes, while at the same time deploring the sentiments she had expressed. “Stop talking twaddle.” She opened the door to the corridor, and he dropped his voice to a whisper to avoid waking the rest of the household. “I’ll have no brawling at Woldwick.”
“And of course your word is law, Lord Anglesford,” she responded, stepping out into the hallway. Haro had the distinct impression that she was mocking him. “Good night,” she said, peeking back over her shoulder, “and pleasant dreams.”
He stood at the door and watched her go until her candle-lit silhouette disappeared at the end of the corridor.
12
Haro woke the next morning wondering whether Eda’s nocturnal visit had merely been a mirage from an overtired mind.
Garth, his valet, was laying out a pair of black stockings clocked with gray on the bed when he cleared his throat ominously. “I don’t know if I’m speaking out of place, m’lord, but there’s a rumor going round the servants’ hall that Miss Swanycke has a Chinese-patterned dressing gown that looks strikingly like yours draped across the chair in her boudoir.”
“My dressing gown?” Haro’s eyes opened as large as cannonballs. There was no point in denying the gown was his. His valet knew every stitch of his clothing by memory. Fiend seize it! Why had he let her slip out into the corridor with his dressing gown still on? Why had he ever let her into his room in the first place?
“Yes, m’lord. Jane the scullery maid saw it when she was lighting the bedroom fires. Normally, I would mind my own business, m’lord, but it seems with such important guests in the house, a rumor like this—”
“Yes, yes. You were quite right to say something. Who all knows?”
“By now, all of the staff, m’lord.”
“Including Mr. Hastings’ valet and Miss Hastings’ lady’s maid?”
Garth pursed his lips. “Perhaps not. They’ve held themselves aloof from the rest of us—a little too lofty for their own good. But Mrs. Rollo, the companion, spends considerable time with the housekeeper.”
Haro groaned. “One can only hope she keeps as quiet to her employers as she does in the drawing room.”
Garth grunted doubtfully but had no suggestions to offer. He had done his duty by his master, and now it was up to the earl to sort out the disaster in the making.
After he had shrugged into his tight-fitting jacket, Haro headed downstairs with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He sat down several times at his writing desk to answer a little correspondence but rose again just as quickly, unable to concentrate on anything but the nightmare at hand. Would Arabella assume he had visited his cousin’s room in the middle of the night? Would this mean the end of their betrothal? Would that mean the end of Woldwick?
He cast aside his quill pen and paced in tortured anxiety, trying to calm himself enough to go in and join the others at breakfast. Taking a deep breath, he entered the breakfast room, feeling momentary relief when no accusations came flying in his general direction. He seated himself beside Arabella who gave him good morning with a smile.
“Ugh,” said Torin, propping up his eyelids with his fingers. “I should have crawled back under the covers and asked Cook to send up my breakfast.”
His mother covered a small yawn with her hand and lifted a cup of chocolate to her lips.
There was one person, however, who seemed unaffected by the dreary atmosphere. Eda swept into the room, dressed in a dark green dress that followed her figure and framed her black hair nicely. Haro was so distracted by his worries that he did not even notice that she had discarded the obligatory black mourning dress in favor of something far more alluring.
“And how are you this morning, dear Arabella?”
“Quite well,” said Arabella, with a smile that was obviously forced. She reached lovingly for her betrothed’s hand and placed it against her own cheek—as if to remind this presumptuous c
ousin that Haro was quite as much hers today as he had been yesterday. Her lips brushed his wrist, in purposeful accident, provoking a tingling all over the earl’s body.
She had not heard. She could not have heard.
He thought of yesterday’s kisses out in the bare birch wood. He could not remember any other girl having such power to make him weak in the knees, but then, the only other girl he had ever had a serious tendre for was Eda. And—this next thought came as a bit of a surprise—he had never given her anything more than a cousinly kiss on the cheek.
Haro reached over and traced his finger across Arabella’s forehead and down her temple, tucking a perfectly formed curl behind her ear. There would be more things lost than Woldwick if the betrothal was broken—the soft skin on Arabella’s face, for example.
Torin nearly choked on a bite of sausage. Lady Anglesford looked down at her cup of chocolate with pinched lips. Mrs. Rollo, had she been a true lady’s companion and not simply a hired drudge, might have nudged her charge in rebuke, but as it was, she simply continued spooning her plain porridge into her even plainer face. Mr. Hastings was too immersed in his newspaper—and too complacent about his new conquest—to feel the revulsion radiating from the earl’s relatives.
“Wonderful to hear that you are doing well!” continued Eda. “I was afraid all the gloom of Woldwick—with its dark trees and horrid curtains—might have dispirited you. But I see you are coping as best you can.”
“And coping quite well,” added Haro, “considering that she has even more vexatious things to deal with.” He glared at Eda, willing her to vacate the breakfast room. He could only hope that she had discreetly hidden the dressing gown before exiting her bedroom that morning.
But Eda was irrepressible, and she had no intention of leaving just yet. “There is something I wanted to show you, dear sister.”
Haro’s heart nearly stopped. Even incorrigible Eda would have qualms about discussing her nocturnal adventures in front of the family over the breakfast table, would she not? But as the malicious sparkle in Eda’s eye brightened, Haro began to fear the worst had come upon him.
To Wed an Heiress Page 8
