“A dabbler? Be serious, Vergil, I don’t think—”
“Not a painter. A musician. Adam groused on occasion about the boy and his pianoforte.”
“Oh, well, a musician. Now there is cause for alarm.”
“Miss Kenwood is a musician, too, so there may be reason for concern, if not cause for alarm.”
Dante raised his eyebrows at this new tidbit.
“A singer,” Vergil explained. “She prefers opera. So you see Nigel’s potential attraction. Similar interests and common blood.”
“You make too much of both. We are talking marriage here, not a lover’s liaison. Did mother and father have similar interests? Do you and Fleur have similar interests?”
He and Fleur had the most basic of similar interests, but that was beside the point. Vergil pushed himself to his feet. “Well, you had better move fast. I will try to discourage frequent visits from Nigel, but I can hardly bar him from the house.”
He walked to the door. Dante’s voice followed. “Well, now, big brother, just how fast do you want me to go?”
Vergil looked back at Dante. Pictures of those naked arms and chest embracing a barely clothed Bianca burst into his mind, inciting an ugly reaction. He did not respond for a moment, while he suppressed both the images and the anger. That embrace would be inevitable. And necessary.
“Do not even consider dishonoring her,” he said. “And keep your hands off Marian while you are in this house. I will not have the ladies scandalized.”
chapter 4
Penelope visited Vergil’s study that afternoon, to inform him that she had received a letter in the day’s post saying that Fleur and her mother would visit in ten days.
“I will be gone for the week prior, but I promise to return by then,” he reassured her.
“I think that I will invite a few friends down from London too,” Penelope said. “It will give Bianca a chance to try her wings.”
“Not too many, Pen. And choose carefully.”
“There is something else, Vergil. I suspect that Dante is developing a tendre for her.”
He tried to focus on what Pen was saying, but his mind’s eye was seeing Miss Kenwood lying on the ground and looking up at him with a startled blush that produced a charge through his veins. His hands felt her feminine waist once again and his body warmed from the closeness when he brought her down from her horse. The shadowy scent of lavender filled his head.
“Do not concern yourself, Pen. Dante will not get himself entangled inadvertently.”
“I am not concerned about Dante. Bianca, however, strikes one as so guileless.”
Guileless?
“And Dante . . . Vergil, I do not know if you are aware of this, as I am sure that no one speaks to you about it, seeing as how you are such a . . . but it is said that he is a merciless rake.”
He wondered what Pen thought men talked about when they got together after dinner with their port and cigars. He had spent years being goaded about his brother’s conquests, and on more than one occasion had been forced to stare down an irate husband.
“Even Dante respects the basic rules. If he has an interest in her, it is an honorable one, I am sure.”
She blinked stunned eyes at him. “You will permit that?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“She is very ignorant of the ways of the world and will be very disillusioned when she learns the truth about him.”
“I would not interfere, Pen. Let things develop as they might. If he wins her, they will work things out the way couples always do with such things.”
“If you say so, but I always resented that no one warned me about Anthony.”
He had wanted to, but as a mere youth it had not been his place, especially with their mother alive and managing things. A boy did not go to his older sister and inform her that her wonderful earl had a reputation as a libertine, and that shadowy allusions suggested his sins were not typical ones.
Someone should have, however, and he remembered well his sister’s unhappiness. Pen’s formal separation from the earl these last five years had brought her some peace, but at the cost of her social standing and a perpetual loneliness. The reminder that a bad marriage could be hell made him ill at ease about Bianca, and he wished Pen had not brought up her own loveless, childless union.
She gave him a look of female skepticism. “I will hold my tongue and see how things develop, but if I suspect that he toys with her, I will scold him severely, Vergil. That is something I will not tolerate.”
“Do as you think best, Pen.”
She left, and he lifted the letter that he had been reading when she entered.
He scanned its contents again. The biggest problem with a secret was that it always demanded your attention at the most inconvenient times. He had planned to stay here as long as Dante did, but that would not be possible now.
He left the study and went to his chambers to tell Morton to expect a journey the day after next.
The next afternoon Bianca sat in the drawing room, tapping her foot impatiently. She expected a visitor sometime soon. Unfortunately, the one whose card the butler delivered to Pen was not the one she anticipated.
Nigel breezed in, looking very romantic in his nip-waisted Parisian frock coat and dark muffler and tousled shoulder-length hair. He bestowed a warm smile of familiarity on Bianca while Pen greeted him.
“You are recently returned from Paris,” Charlotte said. “You will have to tell us all about it.”
Nigel obligingly entertained them with some descriptions of the latest fashions. Bianca barely heard, even though her cousin directed most of his attention to her. She listened for sounds of another arrival.
The doors opened, but it was only Vergil and Dante.
“I hope that you plan to make Woodleigh your home, at least through the autumn,” Penelope said.
“It is my intention to do so.”
“I will be hosting a house party here soon, and I will count on your riding over to join us whenever you can.”
“That is most kind of you. I rarely visited my great-uncle, so I am all but new to these parts.”
“You have not spent much time in England these last years, have you, Kenwood?” Vergil asked.
“I have preferred Paris. I found the culture there to be of surpassing quality. The artistic life is very rich.”
“You have an interest in the arts?” Penelope asked. “Then you will enjoy the company of my party. Your cousin is no mean artist herself. She sings like an angel and has graciously entertained Charlotte and me on occasion.”
Nigel’s expression showed polite interest, but also carried a patronizing tinge. Bianca guessed that he had met many young women whose friends believed they could sing like angels.
“Let us cajole her to sing now,” Charlotte said. “Vergil and Dante have never heard her.”
“I would be honored to accompany you,” Nigel offered. “I am passably competent on the pianoforte.”
Bianca felt a little cornered. She had only entertained Penelope and Charlotte with popular drawing-room songs, and had managed little serious practice over the last two weeks. All the same, the opportunity to sing, even if it couldn’t be her best effort, excited her.
They all went to the music room and Nigel took his position at the pianoforte. “My repertoire of popular songs is limited,” he warned her in a slightly superior way.
“Perhaps an aria would make more sense, then.”
He looked up in delighted surprise. They agreed on one by Mozart, which she had learned just before leaving Baltimore. The prospect of this little performance quickened her heart.
The others positioned themselves on benches and chairs. Nigel played a few measures, to introduce the piece.
Her spirits immediately soared with the notes. No need to restrain her voice like she did in her room while she practiced scales. No cold isolation such as she experienced when she snuck away to sing on the grounds. Her joy in letting her voice vent its streng
th colored the sounds.
The reactions of her little audience produced a type of power. Penelope looked stunned, Dante enthralled, Charlotte confused, and Vergil sharply interested. She glanced aside at Nigel and saw surprised approval. His skill at the pianoforte was considerable, and she suspected that he understood that the audience gave the skill meaning.
When she finished, the room was so silent she could hear insects through the open window. She held the swelling euphoria for a priceless heartbeat and then released it.
“That was astonishing, dear cousin,” Nigel said quietly. “You have been training in earnest.”
“You amaze us all, Bianca,” Penelope said. “And your playing was masterful, Sir Nigel. I can see that music is a serious interest for you.”
“Not an interest, but a passion.” His eyes met Bianca’s with a glimmer that said they shared a secret these others could never understand.
“You must promise to play when my guests are here. Perhaps we can induce Bianca to sing as well. It will make for a wonderful evening.”
“I would be honored.”
He began to take his leave, imploring Penelope to visit Woodleigh soon. The butler entered before Pen called for him, carrying a card.
“A man has arrived, my lady. He requests to see Miss Kenwood.”
Penelope examined the card and raised her eyebrows when she handed it to Bianca. Bianca knew the name before she read it.
The visitor she had been expecting had finally arrived.
“It is business, Penelope. Is there someplace where I may meet with him alone?”
“Put him in my study,” Vergil instructed the butler. “Miss Kenwood can conduct her business there.”
Bianca saw Nigel off and then ran down the corridor to the study, still feeling lighthearted from singing.
She had never visited the study before. It faced north, and the light coming through the pointed Gothic windows offered veiled illumination of the dark wood desk, the wall of books, and the watercolor landscapes.
Her visitor rose from a chair near the window.
“Mr. Peterson, I am delighted that you came.”
“I was relieved to receive your summons, Miss Kenwood. When you did not make our last appointment I grew concerned.”
“Lord Laclere found me and had other plans for my visit in your country.”
She took a place on the padded window seat. A deep sill ran inside the window. It held an assortment of what appeared to be unusual toys. One was a wood-and-chain catapult. Another was a wood-and-leather carriage. A third appeared to be nothing in particular, just a series of grooved ramps leading one to the other, decorated with chains and wheels.
Their construction was somewhat rustic. She guessed that Vergil had made them when he was a boy. The notion that the proper and stern viscount preserved memories of his childhood in his inner sanctum charmed her, even though, for the life of her, she could not imagine such a man as ever being boyish.
Mr. Peterson was a man of middle years, balding and pale, with gray eyes that could look shrewd or deferential depending on the circumstances. When she had first visited him in London, the shrewd side had been quick to understand her explanation that, while she could not pay his fees now, she had expectations that would ultimately settle things quite nicely.
“You have reviewed the will?” she asked.
“I have. I met with your grandfather’s solicitor. He seemed surprised that you had engaged me, but cooperated to the extent he was obliged to. No more, however.”
“What did you learn? Can Lord Laclere’s rule be broken?”
“If you are not cared for, or if there is evidence of fraud, it is possible to have that provision set aside, but the court will not permit you the independence that I think you seek. If the viscount is not your guardian, someone else will be named. With a man of his stature, any abuse of his position would have to be egregious before a court took action.”
She fumed with disappointment. The pointless toy caught her attention and she noticed a little lead ball at its base. Debating her next move with Vergil, she absently lifted it and dropped it on the uppermost ramp. It rolled its way down from one to the other, back and forth, setting off little wheels and pulleys when its weight hit different levels.
“Miss Kenwood, it is not a permanent situation—less than a year. You are a wealthy young woman, and it is understandable that your grandfather did not want to leave you the unprotected prey of unscrupulous fortune hunters.”
“How wealthy?”
“Excuse me? I assumed that you knew.”
“I know in general terms. Exactly how wealthy?”
“The income from the amount invested in the funds should reach at least three thousand pounds this year.”
“That is a fortune in itself, and far more than enough for my purposes.”
“Your guardian will control it, releasing funds to you as necessary, to cover your expenses. He is required to be reasonable regarding your requests.”
She doubted that Vergil would be so reasonable as to hand her several hundred so that she could escape to Milan. If he controlled her income, he controlled her movements. In point of fact, he controlled her life.
“Now, the other part of your inheritance is more complicated,” Mr. Peterson said, continuing his report.
“What other part?”
“Your grandfather was a man of business. Toward the end of his life he sold out of most of them. However, he held on to three partnerships. Two were minor holdings in transportation companies, and the third was a majority in a cotton mill in Manchester. You were also bequeathed his interest in those businesses, less ten percent of the mill, which was given to your cousin.”
“The viscount is also my trustee, however. He manages those investments.”
“These partnerships are not a part of the permanent trust like the funds are, however. If you marry or come of age, he must relinquish control of them. Actually, it surprises me that he has not sold out of those businesses. They represent a threat to your wealth. Should anything go wrong, all owners are fully responsible for debts incurred.”
These business did not really interest her much, unless . . . “Is there income from them as well?”
“The solicitor was not inclined to let me see those records. I think that the mill does pay.”
“What will happen with that income?”
“It will go to your trustee, who presumably will invest it in more funds. Or it will be sent to your guardian.”
Who was the same person. Trustee. Guardian. Everywhere she turned in this conversation she kept bumping into Vergil Duclairc.
“Mr. Peterson, I would like you present while I speak with Lord Laclere. The situation he has created is intolerable. I am being kept a prisoner here.”
She sent the butler to request Vergil’s attendance. Mr. Peterson looked very discomforted at the notion of the upcoming interview. By the time Vergil came through the door, deference had replaced shrewdness in those gray eyes, and the balding pate showed tiny beads of sweat.
“Lord Laclere, this is Mr. Peterson. He is my solicitor.”
Vergil coolly examined the attorney with bored, aristocratic hauteur. Mr. Peterson dissolved into an obsequious fluster. Bianca fought the urge to scold him to be a man.
Vergil turned critical eyes on her. “I did not know that you had engaged a solicitor, Miss Kenwood.”
“It was one of the first things I attended to when I arrived in London.”
“Your grandfather’s solicitor, or mine, or I myself, would have been happy to explain anything that you needed to know.”
“I thought it best to have my own representation and to decide for myself what I needed to know.”
“I trust that Mr. Peterson has satisfied your curiosity on all points.”
“Almost all. He has explained about the business partnerships that I have inherited, and suggested that you should have sold them out, for safety’s sake.”
“I did not put i
t that way, my lord,” Mr. Peterson rushed to explain. “I only explained the law regarding a partner’s financial responsibilities.”
“As you should for your client. I am obtaining information about the value of the partnerships. As trustee, it would be irresponsible for me to give them away. There have been several inquiries regarding purchase that I will pursue when I am in a better position to judge their fairness. These things take time, however. It is difficult to obtain honest information from the managers and other owners.”
“Excellent, my lord. Just the sort of careful oversight one would expect. I think it is obvious that all is in perfect order, Miss Kenwood, and that you are fortunate to have Lord Laclere taking care—”
“When do the companies pay out the profits?” she asked.
Steely forbearance set Vergil’s jaw and mouth. “If there are profits, the companies pay out once a year. It will be reinvested in government funds.”
“Have the funds themselves paid since my grandfather’s death?”
“They have.”
“Has that income also been reinvested?”
“Most of it.”
Most, but not all. “Mr. Peterson, would you be so kind as to wait for me in the library?”
Mr. Peterson was delighted to do so. He almost stumbled in his hasty retreat.
Bianca took a chair facing Vergil. “I want you to arrange for the income to be at my disposal.”
“I have no intention of doing so.”
“It is my inheritance.”
“Even if you were the most sensible of young women, I would fail in my duty if I handed it to you. As it is, you have expressed intentions that would make me a conspirator in your ruin. It is out of the question.”
“Mr. Peterson explained that a guardian is expected to be reasonable in releasing those funds.”
“A sum is available to meet your needs. Tradesmen need only send their bills to me. Modistes and others who cater to women are accustomed to that. Barring extravagant spending on your part, we need never speak of this again.”
The Saint Page 6
