by Mary Balogh
He did not wait to hear what it was he would wish.
“But it is no trouble at all,” he assured everyone. “I love nothing better than an evening of music, especially when I may be a participant rather than a mere listener. However, I must ask if I am being presumptuous—are there auditions?”
That question drew a burst of hilarity from most of the choir members. Even Miss Merrywether tittered.
“No one with a desire to sing with us has ever been turned away, my lord,” the vicar assured him. “We should get started, then.”
It was certainly not a particularly musical group. Someone who was nominally a contralto was tone deaf but sang heartily nevertheless, one of the sopranos sang with a shrill vibrato, the bass section proceeded under the apparent assumption that it was their primary function to drown out the rest of the choir, and Mr. Worthington did indeed display a tendency to join forces with them when he was not inventing a tune all of his own. Miss Merrywether was heavy-handed on the pianoforte, and the conductor slowed or speeded up the rhythm with bewildering and unpredictable frequency.
But despite it all, music was created.
Ferdinand amused himself by imagining the reactions of his friends if they could see him now. They would bundle him up and cart him off to Bedlam as a raving lunatic. Tresham would fix him with one of his famous black stares. No—perhaps not. Tresham had been playing the pianoforte again during the past few years—since his marriage, in fact—instead of smothering his talent as he had done most of his life. Their father had brought them up to the belief that the most deadly of all sins for a Dudley male was anything that hinted at effeminacy. Music, art, an overindulgence in intellectual pursuits—all had been ruthlessly stamped out, with the aid of that infamous birch cane when necessary.
Ferdinand had enjoyed both the singing and the company. And obviously he had cooled the hostility of at least a few of the neighbors with whom he was going to have to consort during future years. It was the habit of several of the male members of the choir, it seemed, to take a glass of ale at the Boar’s Head on choir evenings. Worthington suggested that he join them.
“Singing dries the throat,” he added by way of explanation and excuse.
“It does indeed, and I would be delighted,” Ferdinand replied. “But Miss Thornhill, did you walk here? May I escort you home in my curricle first?”
“I brought the gig, thank you, my lord,” she said, and he could tell from the stiffness of her voice that she was furious. She must feel let down by her friends, who were not repulsing him as they ought.
And so he went off to drink with six other male choristers and the realization that country life was very different from town life. More egalitarian. More genial. More to his taste—a strange thought, considering the fact that he had spent the years since Oxford kicking up every lark that fell his way and generally leading a fast, wild existence in London.
If only there were not Viola Thornhill. In some strange way he felt indignant on her behalf that the people who were her friends had allowed him within the space of one day to begin to inveigle himself into their lives. For, after all, they could not both live here, he and Miss Thornhill. One of them was going to have to leave, and that one, of course, was she. But her friends should be furious with him. They should be making life sheer hell for him.
“HE COULD NOT REALLY have enjoyed choir practice,” Viola said. “Could he, Hannah?”
“I don’t know, Miss Vi,” Hannah said, drawing the brush in one firm stroke from the crown of Viola’s head to the ends of her hair below her waist. “I just don’t know.”
“Well, I do,” Viola said firmly. “Gentlemen like him just do not enjoy the company of people like that, Hannah. And they certainly do not enjoy singing church music with a choir like ours. He must have been excruciatingly bored. In fact, I really believe that it turned out for the best that he decided to go. After today he is sure to realize that this corner of Somersetshire has nothing whatsoever to offer a sophisticated and dissipated London rake. Do you think?”
“What I think, Miss Vi,” Hannah said, “is that that man has as much charm as he has good looks and that he knows how to use both to his advantage. And I think he is a dangerous man because he will not ever admit defeat. If you had not been here when he came, he would likely have gone off again to wherever he came from within a week. But you are here, you see, and you have challenged him. That is what I think.”
It was so exactly what Viola herself thought that there was nothing to add. She merely sighed as Hannah brushed back the hair from her face and began to plait it for the night.
“The thing is, Miss Vi,” Hannah said when she had almost finished the task, “I thought in the village the other day that he had an eye for you. In fact, I am sure he did, him playing for your daisies and taking you onto the green to dance about the maypole and all that. And then he turned up here next morning just like fate had brought him, not knowing it was your home. And now when you have tried your best to drive him away, he has risen to the task and shown that he is your equal. I think he is enjoying the challenge—just because it is you, Miss Vi. Perhaps you should change your tactics, not try to drive him away, but—”
“Hannah!” Viola cut her off midsentence. “What on earth are you suggesting? That I lure that man into falling in love with me? How would that get rid of him, even if it could be done and even if I wished to do it?”
“I wasn’t thinking of your getting rid of him, exactly,” Hannah said, twisting a length of ribbon about the end of Viola’s braid.
“You were not—”
“The thing is, Miss Vi,” Hannah said, turning to put away the dress and other garments Viola had just removed, “I cannot accept that your life is over. You are still young. You are still lovely and sweet and kind and … Your life cannot possibly be over, that is all.”
“Well, it is, Hannah.” Viola’s voice was shaking. “But at least it has been a peaceful half existence I have been living here. He is determined to drive me away. Then there will be nothing left. Nothing at all. No life, no home, no dream. No income.” She swallowed convulsively. Panic had her stomach tied in knots.
“Not if he fell in love with you, he wouldn’t,” Hannah said. “And he is already partway there, Miss Vi. You could see to it that he fell all the way.”
“Gentlemen do not house their mistresses on their country estates,” Viola said tartly.
“Not mistress, Miss Vi.”
Viola turned on the stool and stared incredulously at her maid. “You think he would marry me? He is Lord Ferdinand Dudley, Hannah. He is a gentleman, a duke’s son. I am a bastard. And that is the kindest thing that can be said about me.”
“Don’t upset yourself,” Hannah said with a sigh. “Stranger things have happened. He would be the lucky one to win your hand.”
“Oh, Hannah.” Viola laughed rather shakily. “Ever the dreamer. But if I ever were to seek a husband, you know, it would be someone far different from Lord Ferdinand. He is everything I most abhor in a gentleman. He is a gamer. A reckless one who plays for high stakes. I will survive somehow without even attempting to make such a dreadful sacrifice. And I have not admitted defeat yet. If he wishes to be rid of me, he will have to have me dragged away. Perhaps then everyone will think a little less of his charm,” she added bitterly.
“That they will.” Hannah was using the soothing voice she had once used on the child Viola when something had happened to make her believe her world had come to an end. Yet that had been the golden time, when really the world had been a very solid, secure place and love had been real and seemingly eternal. “You get into bed now, Miss Vi. There is nothing a good night’s sleep will not solve.”
Viola laughed and hugged her maid. “At least I have you, the very best friend anyone ever had,” she said. “Very well, then, I will go to bed and to sleep like a good girl, and tomorrow all my problems will have vanished. Perhaps he will be so drunk when he leaves the Boar’s Head that he will ride for
London and forget all about Pinewood. Perhaps he will fall off his horse and break his neck.”
“Lovey!” Hannah said reproachfully.
“But he did not ride to the village,” Viola said. “He took his curricle. All the better. He has farther to fall.”
She lay in bed a little while later, wide awake, staring up at the shadowed canopy over her head, wondering how life could have changed so completely within two days.
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT when Ferdinand returned home. The house was in darkness. Indignant darkness, he thought with a grin. She probably expected him to come staggering home, roaring out obscene ditties off-key and slurring his words. But the knowledge that it was not really a game they played soon wiped the grin from his face. He wished it were something that harmless. She was an interesting opponent.
Jarvey was still up. He came prowling into the hall as Ferdinand let himself in through the unlocked door, a branch of candles held aloft in one hand, its shadows across his face making him look somewhat sinister.
“Ah, Jarvey.” Ferdinand handed the man his hat and cloak and whip. “Waited up for me, did you? And Bentley did too, I daresay?”
“Yes, my lord,” the butler informed him. “I’ll send him up to your room immediately.”
“You may send him to bed,” Ferdinand said, making for the library. “And go to your own too. I’ll not need either of you again tonight.”
But he did not really know why he had come to the library, he thought after he had shut the door behind him. It was just that soon after midnight seemed a ridiculously early hour at which to retire. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it over the back of a chair. His waistcoat joined it there. He loosened and then removed his neckcloth. Now he was comfortable enough to settle into a chair with a book—except that he did not feel in the mood for reading. It was too late. He wandered over to the glassfronted cabinet in one corner of the library and poured himself a brandy, but he did not particularly feel like drinking it, he realized after the first sip. He had had three glasses of ale at the Boar’s Head. He had never been much of a solitary drinker. Or much of a heavy drinker at all, in fact. He was not an advocate of thick morning heads, having experienced a few of them during his youth.
There must be a solution to her problems, he thought, throwing himself into one of the chairs grouped about the fireplace. He just wished she would help him find one instead of clinging to the notion that the will would exonerate her—or that the will had been tampered with.
Why was he worrying about her problems? They were not his. They had nothing to do with him. He was giving himself a headache, a grossly unfair consequence of drinking only three glasses of ale over two and a half hours.
She had friends here. She was well liked here. If he was not much mistaken—he would know for sure when he had studied the estate books more closely and spoken with Paxton again—she had been involved in running and improving the estate. She was involved in community activities. What she should be doing was staying here.
She could stay if she married that ass and prize bore, Claypole.
She could stay if …
Ferdinand stared at the dark painting hanging over the mantel. No! Definitely not that—definitely! Where the devil had that idea popped out from? But the devil that had nudged the strange idea into his mind spoke on.
She is young and beautiful and desirable.
So were dozens of other girls who had set their caps for him anytime during the past six or seven years. He had never for a moment considered matrimony with any of them.
She is fresh and innocent.
Any woman who married him would have a duke for a brother-in-law. She would be marrying into the ton. She would be marrying a very wealthy man. Freshness and innocence would disappear in a trice once the pleasures of society were tasted and once there were other men, more personable than Claypole, to admire her. She would be no different from any other woman in a similar marriage.
She believes in love. She trusts love, even when to all appearances it has betrayed her.
Both love and trust would disappear with innocence.
You want her.
Ferdinand closed his eyes and spread his hands on the armrests of the chair. He breathed deeply and evenly. She was an innocent. She was living unchaperoned in his house. That was scandal enough without his lusting after her.
She has a body to die for.
And he would die too before giving up his freedom merely in order to possess it.
Her problems would be solved and your conscience would be appeased if you married her.
Damn Bamber, Ferdinand thought vehemently. And damn Bamber’s father. And damn Leavering for having impregnated his wife just when he had, so that he had not been the one to play for Pinewood instead of Ferdinand. Damn Brookes’s.
He was not going to play the gallant by offering her marriage. The very idea had him reaching up to tug at his overtight neckcloth—only to discover that he had removed it before he sat down. He was in a bad way, indeed.
He was going to go to bed, Ferdinand decided, getting determinedly to his feet. Not that he was going to be able to sleep, even though he had ordered Bentley to find him different pillows or, failing that, to set a block of marble at the head of his bed, since marble could not be less comfortable than what he had slept on last night. But there was nothing else to do except go to bed.
He snuffed the candles, having decided that there was quite enough moonlight beaming through the windows to light his way upstairs. With one finger he hooked his coat and waistcoat over his shoulder and left the room.
He fervently hoped he would rise in the morning in a more sensible frame of mind.
8
HE UPPER CORRIDOR WAS DARKER THAN THE hall and staircase. There was only one window at the far end. But, preoccupied with his thoughts as he was, it did not occur to Ferdinand to regret not bringing a candle with him until he went plowing into a table, the corner of which caught him painfully in the middle of the thigh.
“Ouch!” he exclaimed loudly before letting loose with a few other, more profane epithets and dropping his coat and waistcoat in order to rub his leg with both hands. But even in the near-darkness he could see that further disaster was looming in the form of a large urn, which was wobbling on the table in imminent danger of toppling to its doom. He roared and lunged for it—and then whooped with self-congratulatory relief when he righted it. He pressed a hand to his injured leg again, but his absorption with the pain was short-lived. Somehow a large painting in a heavy, ornate frame had been dislodged from the wall and crashed to the floor, its descent made more spectacular by the fact that it brought the urn down with it, smashing it to smithereens, and overturned the table into the bargain.
Ferdinand swore foully and eloquently at the mess around him, though he could scarcely see the full extent of it in the darkness. He stepped back from the debris and rubbed his leg. And then suddenly there was light, illuminating the scene and momentarily dazzling him.
“You are drunk!” the person holding the candle informed him coldly.
Ferdinand put up a hand to shade his eyes. How exactly like a woman to jump to that conclusion.
“Devilish foxed,” he agreed curtly. “Three sheets to the wind. And what’s it to you?” He returned his attention to the disaster he could now see clearly, rubbing his thigh at the same time. The painting looked as if it weighed a ton, but he waded in among the debris and somehow hefted it back up to its position on the wall. He picked up the table and set it to rights. There was no apparent damage to it. But he could do nothing except grimace at the scattered remains of the urn, which lay in a few thousand separate pieces.
Her candle had been dazzling him the whole while. And she had been coming closer. When he looked at her, feeling still annoyed but also decidedly sheepish, he could see her clearly for the first time.
Good God! She had not stopped either to dress or to throw on a dressing gown. Not that there was anything particularly indecent abo
ut her appearance. Her white cotton nightgown covered her from neck to wrists to ankles. She wore no nightcap, but her hair was scraped back from her face and lay in a thick braid down her back.
She did not look indecent at all, even if her feet were bare. She looked like chastity incarnate, in fact. But still and all, it was just a nightgown, and one could not prevent oneself from imagining what was—or, more to the purpose, what was not—beneath it. Nothing whatsoever, at a guess. Ferdinand’s temperature soared and he rubbed harder at his bruised thigh.
“What is it to me?” she asked, repeating his question, her voice tight with self-righteous indignation. “It is the middle of the night. I am trying to sleep.”
“It is a downright stupid place to keep a table—in the middle of the corridor,” he said, careful not to look fully at her and then noticing his coat and waistcoat on the floor. He was clad only in shirt and breeches and stockings himself. Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord, he could have done without this. They were alone together after midnight in the darkened corridor outside both their bedchambers—and he had thoughts crowding his mind that had no business being there at all.
Lustful thoughts.
She herself was safely armed with indignation—at least for the moment. She had probably never even heard of lust. “The table was standing against the wall, my lord,” she pointed out with cold civility. “The painting was hanging on the wall. If there was any stupidity involved in what has happened here, it was yours in lurching along the corridor without a candle while you were drunk.”
“Deuce take it,” he said, “I suppose that urn was worth a king’s ransom.”
“At least that much,” she agreed. “It was also unspeakably hideous.”
He grinned directly at her when she said that and then wished he had kept his eyes averted. She had the sort of face—a perfect oval with high cheekbones, a straight nose, large eyes, and soft, kissable lips—that actually looked more beautiful without the distraction of curls and ringlets to dress it up. Her usual coronet of plaits gave her a regal air. Tonight’s loose braid gave her a youthful look, an aura of innocence and purity. His temperature edged up another notch as he determinedly returned his attention to the sad remains of the urn.
