Smug puss.
Still, he felt no lingering animosity. In truth, he felt quite the opposite.
“Is that how you manage your father?” Clun inquired to let her know he was aware of her ploy.
For an instant, he saw her expression cloud over. “No. I don’t manage the earl. I would’ve thought our betrothal made that plain.”
They walked together in silence back to the little cottage. Inside, she brought mugs and the chipped pitcher to the table and motioned for him to be seated.
“Milk?” He asked and poured some into each mug.
“I milked one of your cows while she pastured,” she grinned. She placed a plate piled high with warm scones down before him. He sat down after she did.
“You milked a cow?”
“She wasn’t keen at first. I succeeded eventually.”
Her cool dignity aroused all kinds of mischief in him. “So you’d prefer to be a gypsy dairymaid than my baroness?”
“Might I remind you, we are enjoying scones during a suspension of hostilities.”
“Merely curious.” He drank his milk in a gulp.
“I understand. More milk?” She offered equably without answering him.
Hoyden.
Clun enjoyed her scones. He enjoyed even more watching her eat a scone. She broke it into small bites and dipped each in her mug before popping it between rosy bee-stung lips. The silence lengthened.
He let out a sigh, almost a groan, and asked, “What is it you wish to know about me?”
“Are you poxy from all your warring and whoring on the continent?”
He choked and sputtered, “What?”
She raised her eyebrows, but said nothing further, bite of scone poised over her mug ready for dipping.
“No,” he replied, badly ruffled. “I am not.”
“How can you be certain?” She popped the morsel into her mouth.
“I won’t tell you until we’re married.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair when she licked her finger.
“I won’t marry you until you tell me.”
“Ah well, we’ve reached an impasse and you’re welcome to cry off.”
“I won’t cry off either.”
“Who’s being peevish now?” He muttered between savage bites of another scone.
“Any children born on the wrong side of the blanket?”
“What lady asks such a thing?” Clun exclaimed.
She waited.
He growled, “There are ways to prevent it.”
“Such as?” Her face was a picture of innocent inquiry as she popped another bite of scone between her lips. The tip of her tongue licked at a crumb at the corner of her mouth. She blinked several times as if waiting for a matter-of-fact answer to her outrageously inappropriate question. Worse was the effect her little kitten tongue was having on his peace of mind.
“Won’t you take my word for it?” He sighed and stretched his neck to right and left till it cracked. “It’s not something I wish to discuss with my betrothed.”
“Yet you’d be willing to discuss it with your wife? That’s nonsense, Clun. I’m just curious.”
He stared at her, with lips clamped shut and the corners of his clenched jaw popping out of their sockets.
“Glare all you want, my lord, I’m not the least intimidated.”
He groaned deeply and scraped both hands slowly down his face.
“French letters, you minx,” he ground out. “But I will not satisfy your curiosity further.”
“Mrs. Abeel always said ‘warring and whoring rhyme for a reason.’”
“Did she? And has this oracle anything else to say about men?”
“Well, no. She passed away two years ago. She used to say ‘even a fine gent can be poxy as a doxy,’” she added, quite matter-of-factly.
In contrast, Clun was shocked. And oddly relieved. Lady Elizabeth Damogan was not a female with easily overset sensibilities. She brought up questions no other well-bred lady would and stood her ground till answered. He was proving far more missish than she.
* * *
As they ate, Lord Clun choked on his scone several times. Odder still, he looked wary of becoming acquainted. Elizabeth wanted to reassure him and set the example by revealing a little about herself.
“I’m told I resemble my late mother.”
“When did you lose her?”
“She died in childbirth. I nearly died, too, apparently. I love to read. The earl taught me how when I was little. I saw less of him as I grew up. Mrs. Abeel said I was the image of my mother. Perhaps it was too much for him to bear, he loved her very much, you see.”
“Your father never remarried?”
“No. I had a nurse until he invited Mrs. Abeel to be my governess and ultimately my chaperone. She was father’s cousin, a naval captain’s widow left in difficult circumstances. Mrs. Abeel taught me deportment, manners and accomplishments — I can paint watercolors and embroider well enough. And bake. I’m not supposed to — you don’t mind, do you?” Elizabeth held a piece of scone up.
He shook his head, his mouth full.
“I cannot sing or play anything more complicated than the hornpipe.”
He choked and swallowed quickly. “A hornpipe? No.”
“Quite well and don’t look at me that way. It is an instrument,” she said, a bit defensively.
He laughed.
“Mrs. Abeel taught me to behave like a lady, but think for myself. She was a much freer thinker than the earl realized. I could ask her anything. If she didn’t know the answer, off we’d go to Hookham’s subscription library in Bond Street or to Bloomsbury and the universal museum in Montague House.”12
“Sounds like a carefree childhood.”
“No. Not carefree,” she said. “From an early age, I loved looking at books. I would hide away in the earl’s library when he wasn’t at home. My favorites were the dictionaries, Dr. Johnson’s and more exotic ones, a dusty old tome about Norman French for one. I spent hours on end reading them. I also admit to enjoying novels as well.”
He stared at her in silence till she, too, fell silent.
“Have other women in your family died giving birth?” He asked quietly.
“None that I know of, why?”
“I was a large baby.”
“I imagine you were,” she said with a chuckle. His tense look and sudden pallor gave her pause. She cast about for a way to reassure him and yet avoid indelicacy. “I won’t die, er, doing as God intended, I assure you.”
“You can promise that, can you?”
“I suppose I can’t guarantee it. You must console yourself that if I do die, you may choose a bride more to your liking in the next go-round.”
“There is that,” he grumbled, but his troubled eyes robbed his words of any levity. Women did die in childbirth, as Elizabeth knew only too well.
“William Tyler de Sayre I am a strong, healthy woman.” She discarded delicacy to state, “I will not expire giving birth to your babies. I may wish you dead. That’s common among women in labor, or so Mrs. Abeel told me. You needn’t fret or fuss about it prematurely. I cannot credit that a battle-hardened soldier should be so squeamish.”
“You’re resigned to our marriage then?”
“Perhaps. Do stop glowering at me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were!” And he was, she thought. He looked gray, grim and glower-y.
“I was watching you,” he protested.
“It’s of no consequence.” She dipped her scone slowly and changed the subject. “What would you expect of me, if I became your wife?”
His eyes were flat, his tone neutral, “After producing an heir, we wouldn’t have to have much to do with each other, if that was your wish.”
“That would seem a bad bargain for both of us,” she cried. “What of affection? What of love? Do you imagine I will give up all hope for it in marriage?”
He swallowed hard. “We can hope, I suppose.”
“You
don’t sound optimistic about the possibility. Why not expect it? Demand it? Why would you settle for so little, Lord Clun?”
“And why must you expect so much? It’s just fairy dust and moonbeams,” he snapped. “What is the point of this discussion? Either you will marry me or you won’t.” He closed his eyes. “I would prefer that you do, however, I won’t demand it. If you wish to cry off, Lady Elizabeth, our betrothal will end as quickly and discreetly as it began. I will not sue for breech of promise, but I’ll see you home without delay. If you marry me, I will do my best to make you content. Failing that, I promise not make you miserable, if I can help it. Otherwise, there’s nothing to add. But I vow, if you won’t have me, that will be the end of it,” Clun concluded. “Let the earl sort you out, I say.”
“I believe enduring love is the only sound foundation for marriage,” Elizabeth said.
“By Jove, what claptrap! Love can turn to contempt in the blink of an eye. And when it sours, believe me, only bitterness and misery remain. Such disappointment spoils all other affection. Whereas mature, reasonable expectations cannot be disappointed, my lady, because they can be fulfilled.”
“I will not marry without love, my lord.”
“Nor will I pretend to love in order to marry,” he growled in reply. “I won’t spout drivel to stoke your overheated fantasies. If we can rub along, that is enough for me. In return, I will honor you, provide for you and protect you.”
“My father loved my mother deeply, devotedly. He loves her to this day. That is perfect, enduring love.”
“I cannot promise you perfection.”
“It’s not impossible to love with devotion. Swans mate for life. Why can’t I?”
“Perhaps because you’re not a waterfowl with a brain the size of an acorn. You have the option to act as a rational creature and accept that there is no such thing as perfect love in reality.”
“I won’t settle for less.”
“By all means, don’t settle, Lady Elizabeth,” Clun spat out and rudely stood to leave. “Don’t settle for me. Hold out for a poet. Or more appealing poultry for all I care. In the meantime, do not presume to lecture me about the proper basis for marriage, as if you knew better than I.”
“By that, you mean I’m too young to know?” She stood up to face him.
“Young, yes, and typically naïve.” He stalked back and forth, stabbing the air in her direction. “But willful foolishness is the prerogative of your gender,” he growled at her, much like a wolf. (The wolf, she refrained from telling him, also mates for life.)
“You’ve never been married either, so what makes you an expert?” She watched him scrape his hair roughly back from his face, grabbing it as if to tear it out in frustration. “Just look at you, listen to you, Lord Clun, you’re a passionate man, why pretend otherwise?” She drew herself up to her full height and inquired, “Would you fight for me?”
He spun around to stare at her from under black brows. “What the devil?”
“If there were a rival for my affections, would you fight for me?” She repeated.
“What have you been up to here, Lady Elizabeth? Inciting duels?”
During the fraught silence, she studied him. His face appeared chiseled from stone, except for the pulsing muscles at the corners of his jaw. She hit a nerve, as she’d hoped.
“It’s a hypothetical question but I’d like your answer.”
“I would hypothetically tear the head off any fool brainless enough to sniff after my betrothed. Is that satisfactory?”
She smiled at him. “Very. Mrs. Abeel always said possessiveness is a sure sign of a man’s affection.”13
“Oh, no! I will not play the lovesick suitor, I vow.” He bit out the words, enunciating them with harsh precision. He did that to intimidate her, as if his absurd bombast could sway her from her purpose. The man was sadly fuddled and in need of her help. She stifled her chuckle just in time. No need to enrage him unnecessarily. It would rankle him to come around to her point of view, but she knew he would. Eventually.
He gave her a filthy look and she watched him stomp out the door. Poor man. He was gruff, volatile and somehow so endearing.
Elizabeth believed with all her heart that she understood Lord Clun better than he himself did. She never considered for a moment that she might be mistaken.
* * *
Despite his quelling words, Lady Elizabeth’s siren’s smile affected Clun far more than he wished to acknowledge. It rattled through his eyes into his head and reverberated down his spine to start an unholy clangor in his groin. He slapped his forehead and stomped out of the little cottage just in time.
“‘Swans mate for life,’ she said,” he snorted. Why did she have to bring up mating? If he hadn’t beaten his hasty retreat, he would’ve divulged yet another sure sign of a man’s affection: a display of happily-agitated man parts in protruding buckskins.
But the rumpus she stirred up was lust not love, he reassured himself as he stalked off. He had nothing to fear. If he stuck to his guns, she would come to appreciate the advantages of a rational marriage.
Chapter 8
In which the impasse continues with one minor development.
Tucked in the remote hill country of southwestern Shropshire, the village of Clun had existed as a market town since early Saxon history. After the Conquest, the first de Sayre Marcher lord founded another market town closer to his lands and castle but it couldn’t compete with the established village. Later Lords Clun accommodated reality rather than lose money trying to impose their will upon it. Thus, Clun village became the principal market town as far as Carreg Castle despite the inconvenience.
In modern times, the village supplied The Graces as well as smaller estates and freeholds scattered in the area. The River Clun flowed placidly through its center and on market day, the high street and the town square teemed with merchants, tradesmen and local farmers pushing handcarts heaped with autumn’s final bounty.
Clun picked his way through the hubbub on Algernon. He’d just purchased two more rams of a new breed developed locally, named as yet only Clun Forest sheep. Roddy was enthusiastic about them because they thrived on typical Shropshire pasturage and produced fine milk, wool and meat. The transaction concluded, Roddy directed the shepherd to load the animals onto a cart for delivery to the home farm.
At a distance, Clun heard a breathy laugh he recognized instantly. His whole body snapped to attention. He swept the market with battlefield eyes.
Lady Elizabeth patted a dairyman’s arm, as she put a small wedge of cheese into a strange-looking, ruffled market bag. She gathered it into her hand and exclaimed, “I shall feast indeed, Mr. Madog, my thanks.”
Madog nodded with a shy, delighted smile before the lady took her leave of him. As usual, she was dressed in her too-short, too-snug homespun frock, still the dairyman instinctively deferred to her. Other men, farmers and laborers, ogled the heedless minx as she sashayed down the street. She didn’t notice Clun riding up behind her.
He dismounted quietly, took a few steps to reach her and slipped his arm around her waist to tug her hard against him. She yelped at his manhandling until she saw who it was.
He boxed her in between his body and Algernon’s side and rumbled low in her ear to avoid attracting attention, “Do you have any notion what could happen to a beautiful woman like you traipsing around the market alone, bartering poached game like a fishwife?”
“You said I was beautiful,” she said, distracted.
“I state the obvious, Bess, don’t fall to pieces.”
“No one calls me Bess,” she murmured.
“You dislike it?”
“Not when you say it. My mother was Elizabeth, too. The earl called her Bess so I never was.” She leaned back to look up at Clun as he stepped away from her. With one hand, he took up the slack in Algernon’s reins and with the other he gripped her elbow.
“Now where was I?” He asked himself as he towed her along like a recalcitrant child.
“You were saying I was beautiful.”
“Don’t be jingle-brained, we’ve already exhausted the subject. Ah, yes. I was ripping up at you for flouncing around here on your own. I shudder to think what might’ve happened if I hadn’t shown up at The Sundew when I did. Of all the heedless —”
“I wasn’t frightened.”
Clun sputtered incoherently at her but finally managed to spit out. “No more of that.”
“Of what, Clun?”
“Whatever the devil you were doing before bandits accosted you. No. More. Of. That. Not if you’re to be my wife.” He could feel the crease between his brows deepen as he frowned at her as fiercely as he was able. He stared at her to penetrate her bemused distraction.
None of it worked.
So he stopped in his tracks, held her still and awaited her reply.
She flicked a glance up at him and sighed, “I suppose you’re right.” A small grin grew into a radiant smile. “According to Mrs. Abeel, protectiveness is another sure sign of a man’s affection.”
Clun rolled his eyes and groaned. “I’ll make arrangements for you to stay at the Graces. In the meantime, I’ll send a maid to the cottage with supplies. And milk,” he enunciated. He leaned close to give her a filthy look that made clear there was to be no more dairy-maiding for her either. “It won’t take long. A day at most.”
“There’s no room for staff in the cottage. Really, Clun,” she cried in amusement. “Don’t be silly.”
“Silly.” Clun now stopped his horse and his fiancée in the middle of bustling Broad Street though they blocked traffic in both directions.
Everyone was only too happy to wait politely while his lordship and the pretty, pixilated gypsy lady sorted things out. In fact, it promised to be grand entertainment. Those closest whispered over their shoulders to keep those farther back informed of the couple’s open-air discussion.
“Better yet, you’ll come now,” Clun stated. “We’ll find a lady’s maid. Must see to that first. I’ll send a letter to your father and invite him to join us at his earliest convenience. We must think of some suitable explanation for your presence here.”
The Baron’s Betrothal: An On-Again, Off-Again, On-Again Regency Romance (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse Series) Page 8
