by Jo Beverley
A middle-aged woman in apron and cap came bustling out of the back of the house. For a moment Brand thought she was Lady Overton, for she looked the type, but she curtsied and said, “I’m sorry, Sir Digby, but Lady Overton’s not well. Ate something that didn’t agree with her.”
Brand twitched to alertness. Surely the New Commonwealth wouldn’t have need to poison the wife.
“She was well enough last night to venture out of doors,” said Edward Overton frostily.
“Happen what did it, sir,” the housekeeper said. “ ‘Course, she wasn’t feeling quite the thing before or she’d have gone to Arradale, wouldn’t she? Can I serve you something, Sir Digby?”
Sir Digby blew out his breath and turned to Brand. “I’m sorry about this, my lord. I’ll be up and see her in a moment. Perhaps she’ll feel better later. But of course, there’s nothing to stop you checking out the stables. Her stable man can tell you anything you want to know.”
“Then I’d be glad to do that. And I won’t stay, since your lady is unwell.”
“No, no! None of that. It’s a long way from here to anywhere you’d want to be unless you go back to Arradale, and you didn’t seem in the mood for more of that sort of nonsense. You’ll stay here the night, my lord, just as we arranged. Now, do you want any refreshment, or should I send for Hextall?”
Brand declined refreshment and was soon strolling toward the stables with a quite young man who clearly knew his business and thought very well of his mistress. All in all, Brand was content to be on his way to interesting matters and out of the house while the family sorted out its problems.
Wenscote kept country hours, so he was summoned back for a meal in the late afternoon. He’d spent an enjoyable time, but was hungry. Once he’d found his room and washed, he returned to the main floor without any sight of Sir Digby’s wife. It was a shame, because he’d enjoy her opinions. The stud was run on the latest principles by well-chosen servants who thought the world of her.
“She’s sulking,” Sir Digby muttered with a frustrated scowl, drawing him into a paneled parlor. “Says she won’t come down while Edward’s here. Says he hit her. He says she’s making it up. What’s a man to do?”
“Trust his wife?”
“All the time?” Sir Digby asked dubiously. “They’re strange creatures, women.”
“Delightfully so. But if a man marries, he must trust. What sort of life will he live otherwise?”
Sir Digby looked flummoxed. “You’re something of a philosopher, my lord. But unmarried, I would point out.”
Brand gave him that telling point. And anyway, he would have married his mysterious lady, and that clearly would have been folly.
“If only William hadn’t died,” the older man said. “I tell you, my lord, there’s been no peace since!”
“Can the estate not be left elsewhere?”
“Nay, it goes to the children, males first, then females. Then to the collaterals in the same manner. It’s been that way for generations and no trouble before.”
“I see. But even so, you don’t need to see or speak to your nephew. It’s clear he cuts up your peace.”
“Aye, aye.” Sir Digby stumped over to a brimming punch bowl and scooped large amounts into two glasses, passing one to Brand. What had happened to abstemious living?
“I’m a family man at heart, my lord,” Sir Digby said after a deep drink. “Me and William, we were like father and son. I keep hoping…”
“I doubt Mr. Edward Overton will change.”
“Aye.” He sighed. “I look back now and think how it might have been if I’d married sooner and had children. But there was William such a likely lad, and a woman about the place is a lot of bother…”
“I think we all look back and think of might-have-beens.”
Sir Digby glanced over furtively. Brand hoped he wasn’t about to be confided in.
“Stone,” Sir Digby said.
He was.
“Stone?”
“The stone. Bladder. Gave me terrible grief all my life. Never thought to marry with that till Rosie. Got cut a few years back for her sake, and it’s been a mighty relief to me. But sometimes the operation… Well, you know… I… er, wanted you to know, my lord, that I wasn’t lazy about my duties.”
“I never entertained the thought.”
“And William married a poor filly,” Sir Digby continued, filling his glass again. “Five miscarriages and two stillborn. Terrible hard on a man, that sort of thing. When she died, I didn’t press him to wed again. I still had hopes that Edward would get over this silliness.” He drained his glass and looked around. “For that matter, where the devil is he? Come on. Sit down, my lord. We’ll start without him. Dinner!” he bellowed, that clearly being notice to serve in this house, for the housekeeper hurried in with a tureen of soup.
Brand took his place, hoping food would end the confidences.
“It’s Wenscote I fret for,” Sir Digby said, tucking his serviette into his stock. “When any of this matters, I’ll be past caring, and Rosie’s provided for. But it’s bitter to think of Wenscote passing into the hands of those carping gray folk.”
Brand took soup from a lushly endowed maid who looked likely to fall out of her bodice at any moment. “They’re good farmers.”
“Aye, so I gather. But a cold sort of Christian. Christ fed the five thousand,” Sir Digby said, breaking his bread and dropping pieces in the soup, “but those lot look at good food as if it’s the devil’s work. He went to a wedding feast, didn’t He, and changed water into wine? But they don’t celebrate their weddings and don’t drink wine. How’s that following the Bible, I ask you?”
Brand attended to the soup, for there was nothing to say.
“And they’ll plow up Rosie’s garden… Ah, there you are, Edward. You’re late!”
Edward Overtoil slipped into his chair. “My apologies, Uncle. I was reading my Bible.”
“With blinkers on. Eat your soup, if it isn’t too wicked for you.”
Brand was startled to see Overton actually scrutinize the soup as if judging it, but at least he did take some. As it turned out, that was all he ate, though he took two bowls and a piece of bread, consuming them slowly as the other courses came and went. He drank small beer diluted with water.
Sir Digby’s color deepened, and Brand suspected it was more at the sight of his nephew’s meal than at the effects of his own, though he was eating far too much. Brand was heartily wishing that he hadn’t accepted this invitation.
“So, Uncle,” Overton said, as he dabbed his lips and carefully folded his serviette, “I trust Aunt Rosamunde is repentant.”
“Let be, Edward.”
“ ‘Suffer not a woman to usurp authority over a man!’ ” Overton quoted. “You risk your place in heaven, Uncle, if you let a woman rule your house. I will continue to visit here.”
Sir Digby scraped the last trace of pie off his plate. “Aye, well, as for that, perhaps it would be best if you didn’t come around so often for the next little while. It’s not as if you take interest in the management of the estate.”
“It will be managed according the principles of the New Commonwealth.”
Sir Digby glared at him. “There’s no purpose to your coming here other than to upset my Rosie.”
“Of course it is not my purpose—”
“But it’s what you do! Give over. I don’t know why you come. We don’t please you. The food don’t please you. The maids offend you. Go do your preaching!”
Edward Overton stood abruptly. “That young woman will be the death of you, Uncle!” Brand was startled by the word “young.”
“And she’s clearly no better than she should be.”
Sir Digby pushed to his feet, a deep red by now. “Don’t you dare imply—”
“I caught her, I tell you! Sneaking into the house, stinking of sin. And where was she when I visited a few weeks back? Gallivanting in Harrogate, was it not?”
“There’s no harm in that!
As it was, she didn’t like it—”
“So she says.”
“She came back early, I tell you!”
“Then where was she when George Cotter was here?”
“Spending a few days with her cousin, that’s all, and me well aware of it! I’ll not have you casting stones at Rosie, Edward. She’s the best, truest wife a man could have.”
“Sometimes, Uncle, I think you are willfully blind.”
Brand sank back in his seat and imagined a comfortable hole opening up, one he could slip into and pull a lid down on top of while the fire blasted overhead.
“With her cousin, indeed!” Edward Overton ranted on. “As if the sinful countess was any sort of companion for a decent woman.”
Brand took more interest.
“Sinful?” Sir Digby echoed. “You can’t go saying things like that!”
“I speak the truth! Her very nature sins. She does not accept the true place of woman. She apes the man. She wears breeches under her skirts and rides astride.”
“Been looking under her skirts, nevvy?”
Edward Overton braced his hands on the table and leaned toward his uncle. “God knows what she does, she and your wife, at that dower house. And I mean that literally, Uncle.” He pushed straight and raised his right hand. “God knows, and He will consign them to hell’s flames for it!”
As the outraged Cotterite stormed out of the room, Sir Digby filled his wineglass again and knocked it back in one gulp.
Brand sat stunned.
Lady Arradale and Lady Overton. The dower house. They’d been there a few weeks back when George Cotter was in the area. A well-run stud. It was all he could do to sit in his seat, not to race up to find the room where Rosie Overton skulked.
He swallowed and hoped he could speak calmly. “I gather your wife is young, Sir Digby.”
The man looked a bit awkward about it. “Aye, she’s quite a bit younger than I am.”
“Still of childbearing age?”
“Oh, aye. She’s not yet twenty-five, my Rosie.”
“Then perhaps God will be kind and send you an alternative to Edward Overton.”
And tears glimmered in the corners of Sir Digby’s blood-shot, half-drunk eyes. “We have hopes, Lord Brand,” he whispered, clearly forgetting that he’d already confided his impotency. He touched the side of his nose. “Not saying anything yet. But hopes.”
As he’d suspected. Collusion between husband and wife. And doubtless the whole of Wensleydale was in on it. Brand stood. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”
Sir Digby nodded, doubtless assuming Brand was finding the necessary. Without subterfuge, Brand climbed the stairs and found the most likely door. He opened it, went through, shut it, then seized the woman he found sitting reading an all-too-familiar book. He hauled her up and drove her back against the wall. “A planned breeding program, perhaps, Lady Overton?”
She went a strange color—stark white with creamy blotches.
Then fainted.
Chapter 21
“Christ.” Brand swept her into his arms and laid her on the big old bed, his heart pounding with panic and guilt.
Tapping her cheek, he said, “Rosie?” finding her name awkward on his tongue. It was his lady, though. This was the body he knew so well, the face he’d sensed beneath the mask.
His Delilah. The woman who’d tricked, drugged, and used him. Bitterness and anger, however, were melting away.
He saw something on his fingers. Rubbed them together. Grease?
Then he realized that the right side of her face was painted. Looking closer, he thought he saw marks underneath.
He went to the washstand, dampened a cloth, and came back to rub at the paint. Her eyelids fluttered, and she put up a weak hand. “Don’t.”
Ignoring her, he removed most of the thick paint, uncovering scars. A network of jagged purple scars ran beside her eye, one streaking down her cheek. He touched that, only able to think how painful and frightening it must have been at the time.
Her eyes opened, saw him, then squeezed shut as if she could make him go away.
“Wake up, Lady Overton. We have things to discuss.” He was clinging desperately to the defense of fury, but deep inside other feelings stirred. He remembered their laughter, their lovemaking, their sharing of minds.
She was certainly as lovely as he’d thought. Scarred, but lovely, with long lashes, and smooth skin dusted with freckles across the bridge of her nose and the tips of her rounded cheeks. His eyes lingered on the full lips he still hungered for.
Catching a breath, he stood and put distance between them.
She opened her eyes, fearful, watchful.
“So? Are you with child?” he asked.
She struggled into a sitting position. “Why do you ask that?”
“What sort of a fool do you take me for? I can see a plan when it’s so clear.”
She winced as if he’d hit her. “I’m sorry.”
“So, are you with child?”
“I think so.”
“My child.”
But she stiffened at that. “Digby’s child.”
“I could prove that not to be true.”
“You’d find it hard.”
Damn her. “With all the servants in on the scheme, I suppose I would. I could take you away from here by force.”
She shrank back. “Why?”
“Because you’re stealing a child from me.”
“It’s as much mine as yours. More!” They were both keeping their voices low, but it was as if she screamed it.
He turned away. Hell’s fire, he didn’t want to take her child. He wanted her—Samson indeed—but he couldn’t have her. She was another man’s wife. He could even appreciate the need here. In their position, he too would do almost anything to save this lovely place from the New Commonwealth.
But had there been nothing true between them? He realized that that was why he was here, why he was attacking her. He needed to believe that beneath the betrayal, beneath the cold-blooded plan, there had been something real.
He turned and walked to the bed. She began to scramble back awkwardly, hindered by her tangled skirts. “Stop it!” she hissed. “This is my husband’s room, too, you know. He could come in.”
“He’s doubtless snoring off his dinner.” But a glance confirmed what he’d ignored before. No question of separate rooms here. She shared this room, this bed, with Sir Digby every night. Rage flaring again, he grasped the front of her bodice and towed her close. “Don’t I deserve something for stud duty?”
“I saved your life!”
And it was true, as was so much more. He knew it and he wasn’t blind. He changed his grip and held her close. After a moment, she stopped fighting.
“Tell me about the scars,” he said. “What happened?”
Her neck relaxed a little and her head rested against him. “A carriage accident. We were going too fast in the fading light.”
“We?”
“Diana and I. Lady Arradale. We’re cousins. Almost of an age. Always up to trouble.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
She’d married at sixteen. Because of the scars? “What were you up to?”
She looked up then, rueful mischief in her eyes. “We’d talked the coachman into taking us to the Richmond Races—something our parents wouldn’t permit. It was just mischance that the coach left the road as we hurried home.”
He traced the long scar. “And your cousin escaped without harm.”
“She was unconscious for two days. And she’s always felt guilty. It was her idea.”
“I’m sure they all were.” Brand felt a strong temptation to take a whip to the wild, feckless Countess of Arradale.
“You underestimate me, sir. I was well able to come up with a good adventure now and then.” Then her humor faded. “Before.”
“Before you married Sir Digby. You were forced?”
“No!” She sighed. “It looked far worse
then. Everyone hovered over me, pitying me. I couldn’t stand their pain. I couldn’t stand being ‘poor Rosie,’ living at home forever with no hope of marrying. When the idea came up, I seized it. They could all stop worrying. I’d be safe at Wenscote behind the walls… He didn’t really want to marry, you know. I didn’t see that then.”
“Someone should have advised you to wait.”
“Everyone was as devastated as I was.” She looked into his eyes, calm and mature. “It was a long time ago.”
“But has led us here.”
“A blessing, then. We’d never have met, you and I, except for that accident.”
“Strange logic, but true.” Then he had to add, “I wish you had trusted me. Was I not trustworthy?”
Tears glistened. “It wasn’t my secret to risk. Please don’t spoil this, Brand. It’s not just me. It’s—”
“Hush. I know.” He wiped one tear from her cheek. “It’s Sir Digby. It’s Wenscote. It’s Wensleydale.”
“Edward must never suspect.”
“Edward already suspects.” At her alarmed look, he added, “Not your pregnancy, but your virtue.”
“He’d suspect the virtue of a hermit in a cave. He’ll never be able to prove anything unless you help him.”
She wasn’t trying to tempt him, he knew, but she was, just by being herself. His Delilah. His beloved. The one, the only. But forbidden. For a moment, he considered seduction, but even if he could fracture her strong will, she lay on her husband’s bed, and even a kiss would be sordid.
He took his arms away and moved from temptation. “I won’t betray you. You have my word. Trust me this time. But don’t underestimate Overton and the Cotterites. Make sure Sir Digby sticks to his resolve to make him stay away.”
She put a hand to her belly. “He might try to do something?”
“He’d probably see himself as the avenging hand of God. You are perpetrating an illegality, you know. If he could prove it in a court of law, I’m sure there are penalties for this sort of thing.”
“He couldn’t prove anything, without you.”
“So, he might try rougher justice. I’m still tempted to carry you away from here, simply to protect you.”
