“You’d do better to believe what I tell you,” he said curtly. “You did not hesitate to define my entire family as reprehensible, though I defy you to tell me anything anyone in it has done—until now, at all events—to deserve such a description from you. To the best of my knowledge, you do not know me or my father, and I doubt very much that you ever had the pleasure of meeting my brother, so what can you know of Deverills, my lady?”
Daintry stared at him, put off her stride by his questions for the simple reason that she had no answers to give him. Never in her life had she encountered anyone like him.
If her father lost his temper, he shouted and carried on, and he had occasionally been known to snatch up a switch or a strap to wreak vengeance for impudence, but he did not confront one or demand answers to unanswerable questions.
Lady Ophelia did not lose her temper. Nor did Lady St. Merryn. Daintry took some pains not to provoke either of them simply because the former had a needle-sharp tongue and the latter a distressing habit of employing tears, reproaches, vapors, and other such iniquitous resources when her fragile sensibilities were even the least bit agitated.
Susan had never tried to set her will against Daintry’s. Nor had their brother, Charles. She had been a match for any governess, and had never been sent to school. Added to all this was the fact that she had been influenced by her aunt to have little opinion of worldly rank. Thus her experience of persons with wills stronger than her own was severely limited, but she recognized in Gideon Deverill a man whose temper at least matched hers, and she rather envied him his air of rigid control.
His grip on her shoulders was tight. She could feel his fingers digging into her flesh, and he continued to look down at her, waiting for her to reply. She wondered what Lady Ophelia thought of it all, but much as she would have liked to glance at that lady, she could not seem to drag her gaze away from his.
Glaring back at him, determined to appear as controlled as he was, she said between her teeth, “You’re hurting me. Let go.”
“I am not hurting you,” he retorted. “I just want you to listen to me.”
His grip slackened nonetheless, and she ripped herself free, crying triumphantly, “I will not listen to you! You lied to me before, and you will no doubt he again. It is all of a piece and just what a Tarrant expects from a Deverill. And do not dare to tell me I can know nothing of Deverills. They are enemies of my family, which is all I need to know. And as for you, sir, I just hope that when Penthorpe does get here, he thrashes you to within an inch of your life for what you have dared to do!”
“He will have to rise from the grave to do it,” Deverill said bluntly. “He was killed at Waterloo.”
“He is dead?” Daintry’s hand flew to her mouth, and she stared at him in shock.
“Damn,” Deverill said, moving toward her again, but this time his expression showed only regret. “Forgive me.”
“Not the best way to break such news, young man,” Lady Ophelia said dryly, speaking for the first time since greeting him. “Distressingly tactless, in fact. No, no, I pray you, do not lay hands upon her again. My niece’s reaction to such treatment is entirely unpredictable, as you have seen.”
“I am sorry to have spoken so abruptly, ma’am,” he said, shooting a glance at Lady Ophelia. “I came here today to make a clean breast of things, and to tell you of Penthorpe’s death, which I ought of course to have done yesterday. When his lordship mistook me for Penthorpe, I … that is, I—”
“Your curiosity about our family is no doubt as great as that of some members of ours about the Deverills,” Lady Ophelia said helpfully. “One cannot help but understand your impulse to take advantage of the opportunity to learn more when it was no doubt thrust upon you by St. Merryn himself.”
“That… that was it,” he said, looking at Daintry.
Though she had been aware of their exchange, she had paid no heed to it. The news of Penthorpe’s death was a shock, but though she was certain she ought to feel grief at this appalling turn of events, she could not feel more than she felt for the thousands of other young soldiers who had given their lives at Waterloo. Her strongest emotion was still anger with Deverill, underscored by a powerful sense of having been betrayed by him.
“You are despicable,” she said at last, “to take advantage in the basest manner of a man’s death, to try to take his place merely to satisfy vulgar curiosity. Such contemptible behavior must be thought offensive by any right-thinking person. To take the place of a man who died valiantly, fighting for his country against the most dreadful odds—”
“I would remind you that I also fought at Waterloo.”
“Oh, to be sure,” she retorted, her voice dripping with sarcasm, “but you survived, did you not, no doubt because braver men, men like poor, unfortunate Penthorpe—”
“This has gone far enough,” Deverill said grimly, his voice carrying easily over hers. “You have not the least notion what you are talking about, so just sit down and be silent while I explain a few facts of life to you.”
“Don’t give me orders! Do you hear me? I told you bef—”
“If you do not sit down, I will sit you down.”
His tone of voice and the hard look in his eyes told her that if he had been angry before, he was furious now. Shooting a glance at Lady Ophelia and seeing from her expression of placid interest that there was not the least hope of rescue from that quarter, Daintry took a step backward, saying tensely, “If you dare to lay hands upon me again, sir, I will—”
“You will what?” He had taken step for step, and he was much too near now for comfort. She could tell from the look of purpose in his eyes that he was going to grab her again, and no doubt he would shake her as he had done before. She waited, lips parted, her breasts heaving with suppressed emotion.
Very close now, he said softly, “What will you do, my lady?”
She stared up at him. “I… I…”
The look in his golden hazel eyes was warm now, inviting. “Tell me,” he murmured, holding her gaze. “I want to know.”
Lady Ophelia cleared her throat, and they both stepped back as if they had been bitten. Daintry, seeing him flush, felt an answering warmth in her own cheeks, and looked quickly away.
Lady Ophelia said, “You know, Dev—Dash, just what is your proper title, young man? I’ve not the least notion what styling your brother took after that poor young cousin of yours died so unexpectedly and your father became Marquess of Jervaulx.”
“Deverill is sufficient, ma’am,” he said. “My cousin being a posthumous child, there have been only heirs presumptive for years, and although I am told that my brother had applied for the heir apparent’s styling, which is Earl of Abreston, it had not yet been conferred. There will be time enough to sort that out once I have learned my new duties, but in the meantime, as the new heir I’ve changed only from Lord Gideon to Lord Deverill.”
She nodded with satisfaction. “I own, I am glad you are not out of reason puffed up by your new consequence, but I have been thinking, sir, and if you came here to tell us young Penthorpe had fallen in battle, surely that somber duty ought to have outweighed idle curiosity. What is more, I am rarely mistaken in my judgment of people, and my first impression of you was an unnaturally favorable one, considering your sex, so perhaps you had better confess your true reason for this pretense of yours.”
Flushing more deeply than ever, he straightened, ran his fingers through his thick hair, and said, “When I accepted your own suggestion, ma’am, as to why I’d behaved so reprehensibly, I did so out of base cowardice because I realized quite suddenly that I had no desire to reveal the truth.”
Instantly Daintry said, “So you are not only a plain and simple liar, sir, but a compulsive one. Can one ever believe what you say?”
His eyes flashed, and she saw with satisfaction that his tight control was slipping, but his voice was steady when he said, “I acted impulsively. I do not generally do so, but when your father declared that I must be Penthorpe, I had alr
eady decided—for reasons it would serve no purpose to reveal now—that I wished to become better acquainted with members of your family. Having no doubt that if I revealed my true identity, St. Merryn would instantly order my departure, I took advantage of his mistake in, as you have noted, the basest manner. If I regret having done so, it is because my action has served only to nourish the previous ill feeling between our families.”
Before Daintry could point out that his words scarcely constituted an apology, he added, “I do not share that ill feeling, by the way. Indeed, if you know the cause of the infamous feud, you know more than I do, for I have not the least notion what began it, nor do I care. Such a petty conflict pales in my mind by comparison to the bloodbath at Waterloo.”
For once in her life she could think of nothing to say. No more than he did she know the cause of the discord between their two families. She knew only that she had grown up hearing that Tarrants and Deverills were not and never would be on speaking terms, that Deverills were beneath contempt, that any contact with them was abhorrent. Trying to remember how she had come to believe such things, she looked inquiringly at Lady Ophelia.
Deverill’s gaze followed hers, and Lady Ophelia, blinking owlishly back at them, said finally, “Dash it, do not look to me to explain it to you. I am sure I have never had the least idea what caused the feuding.”
Daintry said, “Then the feud dates back even farther than I had thought, Aunt. Is it a truly ancient one?”
“No, of course it is not, though Tarrants have resided in this part of Cornwall for generations. The Deverills …” She raised her eyebrows at Deverill.
“Deverill Court has been part of the family holdings for nearly five hundred years, ma’am, though to be sure, it has never been the primary seat for the Marquesses of Jervaulx. I know that in my great-grandmother’s time, it was the dower house, where my grandfather grew up and where he continued to reside after his brother succeeded to the title. My father was born in that house, as were my brother and I. I believe the feud originated in my grandfather’s day, but if that is true, surely you would know … that is to say—” He broke off, clearly trying to think of a tactful way to make his point.
“You are perfectly right,” Lady Ophelia said. “Tom Deverill and Ned Tarrant were the best of friends as boys. They were almost exactly the same age, I believe, and both went off to Eton together as happy as grigs, and then on to Oxford, where they shared the same tutors. And both of them made dead sets for the same females when they went to London to learn to be gentlemen.”
“Then perhaps it was a female who caused the feud,” Daintry suggested. “That has been known to happen before.”
“Well, I do not think it can have been that,” Lady Ophelia said, looking self-conscious. “You see, for the most part, they made wagers as to which could achieve success first with a chosen target. It was only a game to them, which I should know, for I was the first to whom they each dared to propose marriage.”
“But then—”
“Oh, no.” Lady Ophelia chuckled. “If you are seeing me as their bone of contention, it was no such thing, for although they each proposed, both knew that I had no intention of marrying any man. I believe they merely put the question to me in order to practice their courting methods, so to speak. Neither one could possibly have had serious intentions.”
Deverill protested. “But surely, ma’am, no gentleman would propose marriage to a lady without being entirely serious about it. Why, where would he be if she accepted?”
Dryly she said, “Gone to his banker, no doubt, to puff off his increased estate. I was a very great heiress, you know, for although my brother inherited the title and estates, Papa divided his extremely large private fortune equally between us.”
“But then, surely both men had excellent reason to pursue you, and each must have been sorry when you turned him down. Are you quite certain—”
“I voiced my opinions and intentions then as clearly as I do now, sir. There can have been no misunderstanding. Moreover, I can tell you that it would have upset your grandfather no end if I had accepted his offer, for he was one who believed, along with Mrs. Malaprop in that otherwise rather humorous play of Mr. Sheridan’s, that ‘thought does not become a young woman.’ Most men despise learned females, you know, and your grandfather was no exception. According to Lord Thomas Deverill, an intelligent female was one who could sew, run a household properly, and produce healthy children. Your grandmother was perfectly capable of all that. I believe she produced six children for him.”
Deverill laughed. “Seven, ma’am, although six of those were females, but surely—”
Tartly, Lady Ophelia said, “Well, Ned Tarrant had only St. Merryn, who now has only Charles to succeed him. And Charles and Davina, though they have been married eleven years, have only our dear Charlotte to their credit. Did you know, by the bye, that your grandmother was an aspiring authoress before she married?”
“Good God, no!” He sounded appalled.
“It is perfectly true, nonetheless. Tom did not approve, however, and so of course she gave up her ambition and devoted herself to pleasing him. Not that her sacrifice was any great loss to the literary world, for her only novel was an utterly unreadable romance—kittenish and cute, just like Harriet herself.”
“Aunt Ophelia, what a thing to say!”
“Well, I know it was, for she gave me the manuscript to read, and I waded through only the first thirty pages before I told her I could stomach no more. Maudlin stuff, all morals and sweet sentiment about a sadly wronged heroine with no backbone whatever, who tried to solve her problems by poking and prying into other people’s lives. Utter twaddle. Why, my own journals are more worthy of publication than that was. My point, however, is that Harriet ought to have been allowed to continue to write if it pleased her, and the fact that Tom utterly forbade it proves that he cannot truly have wished to marry me.”
Deverill looked perplexed. “I collect that you were not then closely related to the Tarrant family, ma’am. How did that connection come about, if I may ask?”
“My brother’s daughter, Letitia, married Daintry’s papa,” Lady Ophelia said. “And I can tell you, St. Merryn—Ned Tarrant, that is, not your papa, Daintry—behaved as if he had got a point more than Tom Deverill when she did. Ned always was looking to line his pockets, so I suppose that, having married a woman with an income of seven thousand a year, then managing to arrange for his son to marry into the Balterley family, he thought he’d won.”
“He did marry better than my grandfather,” Deverill said. “At least, if my grandmother was an heiress, I never knew it.”
“She wasn’t,” Lady Ophelia said, “but she had always had a soft spot in her heart for Tom. I thought, myself, that Harriet hoped he would make her a marchioness, but although the senior branch of your family was never strong, it didn’t die out soon enough to benefit her. In any case, Tom didn’t marry her until several years after the feud began and she’s been dead for forty years, so she can be of no help to you now. Tom himself has been dead for nearly thirty years. I don’t suppose you even remember him.”
Deverill shook his head.
“I am sorry I cannot be of more help,” she said.
Deverill turned to Daintry. “You must agree now that it is absurd to ring a peal over me in the name of this old feud when I daresay everyone connected with it has just as little understanding of it as we do.”
Daintry felt obliged to agree, but Lady Ophelia clicked her tongue in annoyance and said, “I gave you credit for better sense, sir. Surely you must realize that reason rarely prevails in such instances as this. If you can convince St. Merryn that there is no longer cause for a feud, I shall congratulate you, but you won’t do it, for a more pigheaded man never existed unless he was a Deverill. More than that I will not say.”
“We must suppose that the feud has been fueled by other incidents over the years,” Deverill said thoughtfully, turning to Daintry. “If we accomplish nothing els
e, I say we should do what we can to end it now and become better acquainted.”
He was looking directly into her eyes, and there was a light in his that warmed her. Though she had been to London and seen all the elegant gentlemen who flocked to the Marriage Mart in search of suitable brides, she had never known a man like this one. Three times she had believed she had found a man she could bear to marry—since her father insisted that marry she must—but each time she had rebelled once she had discovered the flaws of character lying beneath each handsome face and manly figure.
No doubt Gideon Deverill also had feet of clay. Indeed, he had already wickedly deceived her, but something about him made it easy just now to forgive the one transgression if there were no more. Until there were—and if she could manage to teach him that it was folly to try ordering her about—she was willing to encourage his attention. Indeed, it was no more than her duty to encourage him, for now that Penthorpe had been killed, her father would certainly make new arrangements to find her a husband if she did not find one for herself, and rather quickly.
She said, “I must apologize, sir. You were quite right to say that I ought not to condemn you and your family out of hand. In truth, I did not realize until just now that I had not the slightest understanding of what caused the feud.”
He smiled. “Perhaps if you were to speak to your father, he would agree to lay the business to rest.”
“He won’t do it,” Lady Ophelia said.
“I do not know if I can bring Papa round my thumb or not, but I mean to try,” Daintry said. “He must be made to understand that there is no longer any feud worthy of the name, and once he does, I am certain he can have no objection to your paying the occasional friendly call, Deverill.”
Lady Ophelia clicked her tongue, but whatever she might have meant to say was lost in a clamor of noise when the doors were opened and a number of people entered the room.
Startled by the din, Daintry whirled to discover what looked like an invasion. “Gracious, Charles and Davina are home,” she exclaimed as she found herself crushed in a brotherly embrace.
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