Manners had gone to ruin since the 1400s.
“I think there is something there, don’t you?” Nell said.
“Something where? Between the horseman and the Banfield chit?”
“Yes,” Nell said. “I do believe that he will fall in love with the Banfield chit and make a complete fool of himself for love of her.”
“No man deserves that, and I’ll see him saved from the Banfields. I’d do no less for any man.”
“Would you?” Nell said, following the party into the hall. It was a cavernous space, old and drafty and full of memory, Banfield memory. He hated the place. “Even if he is a Spaniard?”
That stopped him for a moment. He did hate the Spaniards. The group of them stood together now, and a Banfield man among them. Lord Michael Beck was the one with Banfield blood, he had discerned that much yesterday.
Roland scowled, waiting for the horseman to be named. He did not like being forced to wait to find out if the man was a Spaniard or not. In a murmur of conversation, he grasped hold of the name: Harold Mort, Viscount Blackwater. That holding was in Ireland, southeast coast, if he was not mistaken. Not a Spaniard!
“Ha,” Roland said, looking at Nell. She stood in the midst of the girls, studying them.
“They’re sisters, Roland. How lovely they are,” she said.
“For Banfields, I suppose,” he said, shrugging, drifting closer to the girls. Nell was wrong; he did blame them for their parentage.
“My girl is named Morgan,” Nell said, smiling at the girl. Morgan’s nose was runny and red-tipped from the cold that always came with ghostly presence; the girl seemed highly sensitive to it, more than most. “Won’t she make a beautiful bride?”
“With that nose?” he said.
Nell rose to the top of the lofty ceiling, smiling down at the group below. Roland joined her there. Blackwater lifted his face to study the ceiling, a frown marking his face.
“They are a stunning couple. I thought his eyes were brown, but they’re blue, the deepest, darkest blue I’ve ever beheld,” Nell gushed, quite unbecomingly. “How long do you think it will take for him to offer for her? He won’t last the week, I shouldn’t think.”
“That man will not be taken in by a Banfield,” Roland said. “I won’t stand for it.”
“Oh, you are the only one here who has anything against the Banfield name,” Nell said, making a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I shouldn’t think he’ll have a problem with her father being the Earl of Banfield. Look! He’s looking at her now, and he looks half smitten already, doesn’t he?”
“He most certainly does not.”
Roland was not going to allow it. He simply was not. He did not bother to hide his feelings on the matter.
“You aren’t going to do anything to hinder their romance, Roland,” Nell said, looking instantly cross. “I know you. I know how you work and I won’t see it happen here. They are going to fall in love and they are going to be married! I won’t hear a word against them.”
“And I won’t hear a word for them!” he said, his voice rising. “That man wandered into this nest of adders and he shall, by God, wander out again without encumbrance!”
“A wife is not an encumbrance!” she shouted.
“Ask any husband that question and see what he answers!” he shouted in reply.
The giant candelabra, freshly dusted and wiped free of cobwebs, swung lightly upon its chain. Blackwater looked on, his frown deepening. Morgan, the Banfield chit, had a handkerchief to her nose and was lightly stamping her feet on the stone floor.
“I say he shall love her and want her for his own,” Nell said.
“I say that fine horseman shall not be chained to a Banfield for all his life.”
“If he’d fallen in the mud you’d think otherwise, I suppose?”
No, probably not, but he hadn’t fallen and a man deserved an ally, even a ghostly one, when women set their caps to marriage.
“He didn’t fall,” he said, “and he shall not marry that girl.”
“We shall see, won’t we?” Nell said, and with those words, Nell was gone.
But not far. She couldn’t go farther than either Lady Morgan Hambly or Harold Mort, not if she was going to force a marriage upon them. He would have to stay close to the two of them as well. He did hope he could work well with Blackwater. Anything to avoid that Banfield girl.
Chapter 2
Harold Mort, Viscount Blackwater, had ridden across the breadth of England on a lark. He and Jack and Teddy had accompanied Michael to a will reading, not something one generally did for a lark. Spending time in Cornwall was also not something one normally thought of as a lark. The landscape was rugged and romantic, according to some, those who were desperate to see romantic qualities in every blessed thing. Hal did not possess that degree of desperation. He saw Cornwall as it was: bleak, barren, boring.
Hal had ridden to Cornwall because he was riding a newly purchased stallion, one he’d picked up at Newmarket, and wanted to learn the fellow, and have the fellow learn him. He’d also been happy enough to continue spending time with his friends, something they had little enough chance to do as they grew older and acquired more responsibility.
The responsibility to marry came to mind, and was just as firmly pushed out of mind. There was never any reason for a man to marry hurriedly and a long list of reasons why he should not marry hurriedly.
There was no reason, either based in responsibility or frivolity that could explain why he had larked his way across England all the way to grim Cornwall. He could not explain to anyone, least of all himself, why he was in Cornwall. He only knew that he must be in Cornwall, that being in Cornwall, at Castle Keyvnor, was precisely where he was supposed to be.
Romantic hogwash. The word destiny sprang to mind, a word he detested as the worst of romantic drivel, the offspring of a weak and credulous mind. His mind was not weak nor was he credulous.
Still, there was something about Castle Keyvnor. He’d felt something before they’d even sighted the bare beginnings of Bocka Morrow, a very ordinary village by any standard. The narrow village streets, the lime washed stone cottages, the slate roofs, the jagged jumble of chimneys marking the pearl white sky. Entirely ordinary. And yet . . . there was something.
His stallion, Keystone, from whom he would build his stables into something to make his mark upon the racing world, had tensed upon entering Bocka Morrow, side-stepping, ears forward, nose quivering. He knew enough to pay attention to his horse, to trust Keystone to scent what he could not, and he had walked him past the fields and then through the village and then into the castle courtyard with a wary eye and a steady hand. It was only that wariness that had allowed him to keep his seat when his horse reared, when he felt icy air descending all around him, and when he had seen the girls alight from their coach.
Six girls, each lovely in her way. His eye had lingered upon the chilled one, the one who drew her cloak and shivered and drew her deep green cloak tighter still. So she felt the cold as well. They were a match in that. No one else seemed to feel it, not from what he could see from watching, yet he could, and she could, and he could not explain the why of that.
He did not like Castle Keyvnor. He did not like things he could not explain. His was not a credulous mind.
“What are you scowling about, Hal?” Jack asked him in an undertone. “You’ll frighten the virgins.”
“‘Tis virgins who frighten the world, and well you know it,” Hal said.
There was a frigid combustion happening right over his head; he could feel the pulsating bands of cold air pounding against his head. The girl, Morgan Hambly, had a nose streaming like a waterfall. She searched for a handkerchief in her reticule and clumsily got it to her nose in time, just. The green cloak grew ever tighter about her.
She had quite a slender figure, even in a woolen cloak.
Hal looked up at the ceiling. Perhaps there was an open window on the roof. He did not see a window. Castles were cold, drafty things. It pr
omised to be an uncomfortable visit. Last night, his first in Keyvnor, he had barely slept an hour.
“Black Death, at it again,” Jack said, grinning.
As his title was Viscount Blackwater and as his family name was Mort, the French word for death, his pet name was explained. Not enjoyed, but explained. To be honest, he took it in stride. There were worse things to be called, such as naive, gullible, irrational, to name but a few.
“Remarkable you kept your seat, Hal,” Teddy said to him. “Though, perhaps not.”
Teddy smiled and Hal nodded at the compliment.
“Cold in here, isn’t it?” Hal said, changing the subject.
The men looked at him, their heads swinging simultaneously in his direction. “Not particularly,” Teddy said. “Perhaps you’ve caught something.”
“And perhaps what he’s caught is wearing petticoats,” Jack said.
“What is a man supposed to do with a petticoat?” Hal asked, smiling.
“If you have to ask, you have more trouble than a bucking stallion,” Jack replied.
“Hal has no trouble from that quarter,” Michael said, joining them, leaving the girls to the care of the butler, who was following them, conversing with Morgan, the red-nosed one. “Petticoats waving at him like flags, poor devil, and he blind to every one.”
“I’d call that trouble,” Teddy said.
“I’d call that disastrous,” Jack said, winking at Hal.
“I’d call that prudent,” Hal said. “I’m to build my stable, get wins on the books, get rich, then get a wife. That’s the proper order of things, my lads. Feel free to take a lesson from my book.”
“I’d rather get rich from White’s book,” Michael said, “but I take your meaning.”
“He doesn’t like it, but he’ll take it,” Jack said.
They all laughed and the subject died gracefully. They followed Michael to the wing of the house that contained their rooms, a winding route that promised to confound him in the dead of night when he was out for a wander.
Out for a predawn wander? He was never out wandering in someone else’s home. Where had that devilish thought come from? The cold drafts in Castle Keyvnor were merciless. He’d be wearing a woolen shawl like a dairy maid before he quit the place.
Chapter 3
“I tell you I am not sick!” Morgan said.
“Tell that to your nose,” Tamsyn, the eldest said.
“Look! It’s stopped,” Morgan said.
She felt perfectly fine, had always felt perfectly fine; it was just that she’d been so sharply cold as soon as she left the carriage. It had been as if winter had descended directly onto her and no other. It had been perfectly horrid, her nose running and red, witnessed by Lord Michael and his friends. That one man, the dark one, Lord Blackwater, had been transfixed by the sight of her nose.
What a first impression she had made!
Oh, well. It was not as if she were marriage mad. Not at all. Let it happen when it happened, as long as it did not happen now. Or even soon. Marriage was for life, and she had every expectation of living a very long life, and she therefore saw no reason to rush out of a situation where she had her sisters, a lovely home, perfectly lovely parents, and a very nice degree of freedom, at least for a virginal girl from a good home. From that situation into a binding marriage contract? There was no hurry, was there?
Marriage meant losing control. Marriage meant marrying and hoping for the best from a man who’d worn his best face to win her father’s approval and her acquiescence. Marriage was meant to last a long, a very long time. Let marriage wait.
Of course, she didn’t share much of these thoughts with anyone. She loved her sisters and she respected her parents, but there was only so much truth a person could take. She suspected her father would think her frivolous. She suspected her mother would find her fractious.
As to what she thought of herself, why, she thought she was a very reasonable, very logical sort of girl. A mother could do a lot worse than to have a daughter like her. She was not the sort, for example, to run off and get herself ruined. No man could tempt her to that. It was a very stupid, very dreamy sort of girl who gave a man that much control, simply upon the hope that he should not do his worst.
Every man alive was capable of doing his worst. The trick was to find a man who was capable, and willing, to do his best. Now that was a man worth considering for marriage. She would be prime material now, her father the latest in a long line of Banfield earls. She was not looking forward to being the hare in this race of hounds, and she knew she would be, as would her sisters. They were pretty girls, each one of them, and they were of marriageable age and of respectable family, each with a hefty dowry in the column. Oh, the men would come running, they would, and she was not eager for the chase to begin. Let this week, the week before the will reading, be a last repose before the hunt began.
She might even last as long as the next London season, a bare six months from now. Six months of quiet and peace before she must defend herself against all comers. She was tired just thinking of it.
At least her nose had stopped running. She didn’t want a red nose and icy fingertips to ruin the will reading. There were so many new people about, like that man, Lord Blackwater with his dark hair and deep, dark blue eyes. And the way he had stayed upon that stallion, it had fair robbed her of breath.
Perhaps she truly was coming down with something. She had never felt starved for breath in her life.
“What sort of look is that you’re wearing?” Rose asked, her third sister. “I do think you might be feverish. I’ve never seen Morgan look like that. Have you ever seen Morgan look like that?” Rose asked Marjorie, the second sister.
“She does look feverish,” Marjorie said. “You should probably stay in bed. We’ll send your regrets down when we go to dinner.”
“You will not,” Morgan said, “send my regrets. I fully intend to go to dinner.”
Though she did feel cold again and she could see at a glance that her four sisters did not, but she kept that to herself. She was determined to see the company, the entire company again, and she was not going to get married any time soon.
Why she was thinking so much of marriage was a complete puzzle to her. She really might be ill with something, some marriage illness, as if there were such a thing.
Looking at her sisters, who did seem very much to want to be married, when they spoke of it at all, she could not but wonder if there might, just perhaps, be something like marriage sickness which afflicted women. Certainly it was a very odd sort of sickness since men seemed immune to it.
“What is so amusing, Morgan?” Gywn asked. Gwyn was the youngest sister.
“Nothing at all,” she answered. “I was only thinking of what to wear this evening.”
“Something that takes that red glow from off your nose, I should think,” Tamsyn said. “Perhaps the ivory crepe.”
She didn’t like the ivory crepe very much. She had always believed it washed her out, robbing her cheeks of rosy health. She supposed that made Tamsyn’s point, though her nose was not runny. Not anymore, thank heaven.
“She thanks Heaven,” Nell said. “She should be thanking me.”
Nell was in the farthest corner of the room, studying the girl she meant to help into happy matrimony. Five sisters, virginal girls, each at the peak of her beauty. Did they not understand that now was the time to strike? Now, when they had youth and beauty in abundance? They lived a protected life and it had made them very ignorant. Her youth had been spent in a more turbulent time, a time of kings with real power and nobles with real ambition.
Had she used her youth and beauty well?
She had not.
She had been as ignorant as they. But now she was here and she would help Morgan Hambly marry the lovely Hal Mort, though what a name he carried. It was enough to put a girl off. Morgan Mort, she would be upon marriage. Hideous. Lord Death, he could be called, and if he did not fall in love with the lovely Morgan, she
would call him exactly that.
Because she had chosen Morgan, singled her out from amongst the living, she could read her. If Morgan had a thought, a firm thought, a passionate thought, a thought hard and clear at the foremost tip of her consciousness, Nell could read it. She had often thought it very much like being a parent reading the thoughts of their own child. After “parenting” some very unworthy people during the first century of her ghostliness, she had given up the practice. Unfortunately, or not, those were the years and the people who had given rise to the legend of Benedict the ghost. Everyone had heard of Benedict, killed right here in Castle Keyvnor. No one had heard of Roland, dead in battle by a Banfield blade or of her, a girl who died of oysters in London.
It was irritating, being ignored so fully. Sometimes even a ghost wanted some attention.
Nell drifted out of the room, after reinforcing the idea that Morgan wear the ivory crepe, and found Roland with Hal. They were in the stables. Hal was seeing to his horse, talking to one of the grooms, one of the more experienced ones, about his horse and how to care for it. Roland, sitting on a crossbeam, looked at her and smiled in approval. Not approval for her but for Hal and the care he took with his horse. Nell rolled her eyes and watched from the open stable doors.
It was a very boring conversation.
“A firm, gentle hand, particularly when saddling him,” Hal was saying, the groom nodding. “He can be snappish if left alone too long so keep a dog with him, if possible.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“You have a dog in mind?”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“He’s arranging for a dog, a pet for his stallion,” Roland said, leaning back against the bracing, grinning.
“If he is so particular about a dog, he should travel with his own,” she said.
“He just bought the horse. I’m certain he will acquire a dog as companion as soon as he can.”
“He might even steal this one.”
“Blackwater is no thief.”
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