by Mary Balogh
But the trouble was, this was no game.
The devil of it was that he was feeling sorry for her this morning. And guilty, for God's sake, as if he were the villain of the piece. The very silliness of this morning's amateurish pranks—and yesterday's—was proof of how desperate she was.
She had shown no inclination to accept his offer to send her to Jane, Duchess of Tresham, his sister-in-law. She had not jumped for joy at the prospect of going to Bamber Court. She had not suggested any alternatives of her own. She seemed markedly unwilling to face up to reality. What else could he suggest? He was going to have to think of something. The only thing he was sure of was that he did not have the stomach to throw her out bodily or have her forcibly removed by a magistrate or constable. He had always been the weak member of the Dudley family in that respect, he thought uneasily. No backbone. But dammit, he felt sorry for her. She was a young innocent in the process of having all her comfort and security ripped away from her.
Ferdinand shook off his dilemma and pushed himself away from the windowsill. First things first. There being no hot coffee to tempt him to sit down at the table again—and he had to admit that the sight of that beefsteak made his stomach feel decidedly rebellious—it was time to go roof climbing.
After going belowstairs to discuss the day's menu with Mrs. Walsh, Viola went to the library, where she intended to spend time bringing the household books up to date. But there was a letter on the desk, one that must have arrived with the morning post. She snatched it up and looked eagerly at the handwriting. Yes! It was from Claire. She was tempted to break the seal and read the contents without further delay, but of course the house was no longer her own. He might walk in upon her at any moment and ask one of his impertinent questions, as he had after breakfast. Where are you going? It was demeaning, to say the least.
Viola slid the unopened letter into the side pocket of her morning dress. There would be more privacy outdoors.
But the outdoors did not look particularly private when she stepped out through the unattended front doors. In fact, the box garden below the terrace was dotted with people—the butler, the head groom, the head gardener and both his assistants, the footman, Rose, Hannah, two male strangers who must be Lord Ferdinand's servants—all standing stock-still facing the house and gazing skyward. Rose had one hand over her eyes, a pointless affectation, since her fingers were spread.
No, Viola thought, correcting her first impression as she stood looking at them all for a moment, it was not skyward they were gazing, but roofward. Of course!
“It still don't make no sense why he didn't send for the sweep,” she heard one of the undergardeners say to the other. “It don't make no sense to clean a chimney from the top.”
“Eli'll fall right through and crack his skull in the hearth, you mark my words,” the other predicted with ghoulish relish.
“Aye. And burn all his hair off.”
Viola went down to join them at a run. He really had gone up there? He had not been bluffing? He and Eli, the groom's young apprentice? She did not want to look. She had no head for heights and could not imagine how anyone did.
“Hush your babbling!” the head gardener instructed his subordinates. “You'll distract their attention.”
Viola turned and looked upward—and her legs turned to jelly. The attic window was opened wide onto the small balcony beyond it. But none of the tall chimneys could be reached from there. The rest of the roof was steeply sloped and covered with gray slates, which looked as smooth as an egg and twice as slippery. Lord Ferdinand Dudley and Eli were standing on the balcony, the former with his hands on his hips and his head tipped back to survey the roof above him. He had shed both his riding coat and his waistcoat.
“Jeb,” Viola said in a loud whisper, “how did Eli plug the chimney? From below or from above?” She had assumed the former. She would never have consented to allowing him to clamber over the roof, putting his life at risk.
“The rags would have caught on fire if they were too low, Miss Thornhill,” the groom explained to her. “He went up after he fetched the cockerel. Swore afterward that he didn't have the head to do it again, mind. But his lordship made him go.”
Well, they had not stepped away from the relative safety of the flat balcony yet. The whispering and shushing were unnecessary.
“Eli!” Viola called, bracketing her mouth with her hands so that the sound of her voice would carry better. “Come down from there immediately before you break your neck. I do not care what Lord Ferdinand says to the contrary.”
They both looked down. Viola could just imagine how precarious their safety looked from up there. It was bad enough from below.
“Come down!” she called again. “Both of you.”
Even across the distance Viola could see Lord Ferdinand's grin as he set a hand on the boy's shoulder and said something that could not be heard from below. And then he swung first one long leg and then the other over the low rail that separated the balcony from the slate roof. He began the climb upward, using both his hands and his feet. Eli stayed where he was.
Rose stifled a shriek, and Mr. Jarvey admonished her sotto voce.
Viola would have sat down on the bench that circled the fountain if she could have moved the necessary six feet to reach it. As it was, she had to stand still, both hands pressed over her mouth. The fool! The imbecile! He would fall and break every bone in his body, and she would have his death on her conscience forevermore. That was probably what he wanted.
But he reached the peak of the roof without mishap. He pulled himself up beside the chimney that connected with the dining room fireplace among others and peered over the top of it—it reached up to his chest.
Foolish man. Idiot man!
“It won't do no good,” Jeb Hardinge muttered. “He won't be able to reach down far enough.”
Then Rose shrieked, the butler scolded, and Lord Ferdinand Dudley braced his hands on top of the chimney, pulled himself up until he could sit on the edge of it, and swung his legs to the inside.
“He won't be happy till he's killed himself,” Hannah said.
“He's a jolly good sport, I must say,” the footman observed, but Viola only half heard him. Lord Ferdinand Dudley was disappearing—had disappeared—inside the chimney.
He would fall through and kill himself. He would get stuck and die a slow and horrible death. If he survived, she would kill him with her bare hands.
It was probably two minutes, but felt more like two hours, before he reappeared—or at least a blackened version of him did. His face looked as black as his hair. His shirt was gray. He held aloft a fistful of blackened rags with a black hand and grinned down at his audience, his teeth startlingly white even from such a distance.
“Not a bird's nest after all,” he called out, “but some mysterious flying object, doubtless from the moon.” He dropped the rags, which tumbled in slow disorder down over the roof and drifted off its edge to litter the terrace below.
How was he going to get down?
He did it in a matter of moments, loping carelessly, for all the world as if he were descending a grassy slope to a soft lawn below. When he reached the railing and the balcony where Eli still stood, he vaulted over the railing and turned to wave one hand. The boy was laughing and applauding.
“He has pluck. One must grant him that,” Jeb Hardinge said.
“A jolly good sport,” the footman agreed.
“He might have made Eli do it, like he threatened,” the head gardener added, “but he did it himself. You won't find too many gents what would be as sporting as that.”
“The thing of it is, you see,” one of the strangers said, watching his master and Eli disappear through the attic window, “his lordship can't bear to stand by watching while someone else has all the fun. This was nothing. I could tell you—”
But Viola had heard enough. “Mr. Jarvey,” she said coldly before setting off with purposeful strides for the terrace. “Perhaps it is time everyone got ba
ck to work?”
They were all admiring that act of utter foolhardi-ness. He was winning them over. Jolly good sport, indeed!
She marched into the house and up the stairs to the bedroom floor. She would have continued on up to the attic, but he was down already, standing with Eli on the clean, costly carpet of the corridor. If there was any soot left in the chimney, she would be surprised to hear it. It was surely all adorning his person.
“That was a reckless and disgusting display!” she cried, not reducing her pace until she was three feet in front of him. “You might have killed yourself !”
He grinned again. How could he possibly succeed in looking handsome and virile even at such a moment? The fact that he did merely fanned her ire.
“And look at the mess you are making on my carpet!”
“You may get back to the stables, lad,” he told Eli. “And if you set so much as one toenail on that roof ever again, you will have a thrashing at my hands to look forward to when you come back down. Do you understand?”
“Yes, m'lord.” And while Viola watched, outraged, the boy grinned cheekily at Lord Ferdinand and cast him a look of pure hero worship before turning and running down the stairs.
“You may eat your dinner tonight in both comfort and warmth, ma'am,” Lord Ferdinand said, turning his attention back to Viola. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must go and face my valet's wrath. He will not be amused by the appearance of my boots.”
“You did it deliberately,” she said, her eyes narrowing, her hands closing into fists at her sides. “You made sure that everyone knew you were going up there before you went. You made sure you would be playing to an audience. You risked life and limb just so that everyone would gaze in admiration and call you a.jolly good sport.”
“No!” His eyes danced with merriment. “Is that what they were saying?”
“Life is nothing but a game to you,” she cried. “You are probably glad you found me here and that I refused to leave. You are probably glad that everyone here is set on your discomfort.”
“You must understand,” he said, “that I have always been able to resist almost every temptation except a challenge. When you threw down the gauntlet, Miss Thornhill, I picked it up. What did you expect?”
“But this is not a game!” Her fingernails were digging painfully into her palms.
His almost-black eyes regarded her out of his blackened face. “No, it is not,” he agreed. “But then, I was not the one who planned or executed the pranks, was I, ma'am? If there is a game afoot, you cannot expect me not to play it, you know. And I always play to win. You may wish to remember that. Give me half an hour or so. I am going to need a bath. Then we will take that walk you agreed to.”
He turned and strode away. Viola watched him until his bedchamber door closed behind him. There was a decidedly grubby spot on the carpet where he had stood, she could see.
I always play to win.
He has pluck.
A jolly good sport.
She felt like throwing a major tantrum. Or weeping self-pityingly into her handkerchief. Or committing murder.
She did none of the three. Instead, she turned on her heel and made her way back downstairs. She was going outside to read her letter. She would go down onto the river walk. If he cared to, he could find her there. But she was not going to wait for him like an obedient scion.
6
She was reading when he found her. At least, she was folding up a letter, probably the one that had been on the library desk earlier. She was sitting on the grassy bank well north of the house, between the path and the river, her light muslin dress spread about her, her hair in its neat braided coronet. She was surrounded by daisies and buttercups and clover. She looked the perfect picture of beauty and innocence, at one with her surroundings.
Ferdinand felt wretched. He had heard that the late Earl of Bamber was a decent sort, though he had not known him personally. But obviously the man had been as much of a loose screw as his son.
She did not look up as he approached, though she surely must have heard him. She was slipping her letter into her pocket. Did she imagine he was going to snatch it away from her to read himself? His annoyance returned.
“Hiding from me, Miss Thornhill?”
She turned her head to look up at him. “With not a single tree to duck behind for cover?” she said. “If I chose to hide from you, my lord, you would not find me.”
He stood on the grass beside her while she turned her gaze toward the river and beyond, her arms clasped about her updrawn knees. He would have preferred to walk with her, but she showed no inclination to get to her feet. He could hardly conduct a reasonable conversation with her, towering over her as he was. He sat down not far from her, one leg stretched out before him, an arm draped over the raised knee of the other.
“You have had a day and a night to think,” he said. “You have had a chance to consult with your friends and neighbors. Although I have sent a request for a copy of the will to be sent down here, I believe you must realize now that Pinewood never was yours. Have you come to any decision about your future?”
“I am staying here,” she said. “This is my home. This is where I belong.”
“Your friends were right last night,” he said. “Your reputation is severely at risk for as long as you stay here with me.”
She laughed softly and plucked a daisy. He watched her split its stem with her thumbnail and then pluck another daisy to thread through it.
“If you are worried about propriety,” she said, “perhaps you are the one who should go away. You have no right to Pinewood. You won its title in a card game at a gaming hell. Doubtless you were so drunk that you did not even know it until the next day.”
“The gaming hell was Brookes's,” he explained. “An eminently respectable gentlemen's club. And one would have to be a fool to gamble while foxed. I am no fool.”
She gave him that low laugh again for answer—he recognized scorn in it—and her daisy chain acquired another link.
“The will may take a week to get here,” he said. “If Bamber decides to send it or a copy of it, that is. He may choose to ignore my request. I really cannot have you staying here indefinitely, you know.” Good Lord, her reputation would be in tatters, if it was not already. He would be expected to make reparation. And he knew what that meant. He was going to find himself leg-shackled to her if he was not very careful.
The very thought of a leg shackle was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat, warm May sunshine notwithstanding.
“Why are you so sure that the old earl meant to leave Pinewood to you?” he asked her. “Apart from the fact that he apparently promised to do so, that is.”
“That he did do so,” she corrected.
“That he did promise, then,” he said. “Why would he promise such a thing? Were you a favorite niece or cousin?”
“He loved me,” she said with quiet vehemence, plucking a number of daisies that were within her reach all at once and setting them down on the grass beside her before resuming her work.
“That does not always mean—”
“And I loved him,” she added. “Perhaps you have never loved or been loved, Lord Ferdinand. Love encompasses trust. I trusted him. I still do. I always will. He said that Pinewood was to be mine, and I do not doubt for one moment that it is.”
“But the will?” He frowned and watched her hands. She had slim, delicate fingers. “If it gives proof that he did not keep his word, then you will have to accept the fact that he let you down.”
“Never!” Her hands paused and she turned her head to glare at him. “All that will have been proved is that someone has tampered with it. Destroyed it, perhaps. I will never lose my trust in him because I will never stop loving him or knowing beyond any doubt that he loved me.”
Ferdinand was silent, shaken by the passion with which she spoke of the love between herself and the old Earl of Bamber. What relationship had they had, for God's sake?
“Tha
t is a serious charge,” he said. “That someone changed the will, I mean.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is.” The daisy chain grew longer.
He did not really want to know more about her. He did not want her to become more of a person to him than she already was. He felt bad enough about her as it was. For a minute or two he fought his curiosity. A few stray curls of dark red hair lay enticingly against the back of her neck.
“Did you grow up in the country?” he asked despite himself.
“No.” He thought for a few relieved moments that she would not elaborate, but she did. “I grew up in London. I spent all my life there until I came here almost two years ago.”
“That must have been a shock to the system,” he said.
“It was.” She had denuded the grass within reach of daisies. She sat holding the two ends of the chain. “But I loved it from the first moment.”
“Are your parents still living?” But if they were, why the devil were they not here with her? Or why was she not with them?
“My mother is.”
“Were you very young when your father died?” he asked.
She spread the daisy chain across her lap, the ends trailing onto the grass on either side of her. Very deliberately she was arranging the daisies so that the blossoms all faced upward.
“My mother married my stepfather when I was nine,” she said. “He died when I was eighteen—in a gaming hell brawl. He had been accused of cheating, and I daresay there was justice in the charge.” Her voice was emotionless.
