Thomas

by Grace Burrowes

  “Spirits at this hour, my lord?” She arranged the guns in their handsome case and rose before his lordship could burden her with his assistance.

  “Cold, sweet tea, Miss Tanner.” The baron saluted her with his glass. “The Regent favors it with ice when he’s feeling poorly. Would you like some?”

  “No, thank you, my lord.”

  Standing on a small stool, Loris stretched up to slide the case onto the top of the bookshelf, from whence she’d taken it. Before she could turn around, the baron’s hands closed on her waist.

  “Must you be so blasted independent?” He swung her down from her perch and glowered at her. “You might have asked me to put the guns away, and then you wouldn’t have needed to teeter about on that stool.”

  “Your concern, while appreciated, is not needed, sir.”

  Sutcliffe had managed a brothel. Very likely, in her wildest imaginings, Loris could not dream of the experience those hands of his had gained while roaming female bodies.

  The baron stepped back and stalked across the room to the desk, upon which he propped a lordly hip.

  “Will you join me, Miss Tanner?” He waved a hand at the chair facing the desk, and—because he was her employer—Loris took a seat.

  “My thanks,” he said, not seating himself on the other side of the desk, but rather remaining right where he was.

  Where to look? Loris chose the shelves behind the desk, which held a variety of children’s miniatures collected by Linden’s former owner. Not a flower in sight, for all Linden had acres of gardens.

  “For the next few weeks, Miss Tanner, I will impose significantly on your time. When does harvest fall here?”

  “Not until September for the field crops. The apples are usually later than that, and the gardens don’t stop producing until October, or even later, if the autumn is mild.”

  Did his lordship wear underlinen beneath this pair of breeches, or did he habitually do without—and if so, why?

  “So for now, you can spare the time to educate me regarding my property?”

  Loris was at once pleased that Sutcliffe would ask and dismayed at the prospect, but not dismayed enough to risk a glance past his thighs up to his sapphire-dark eyes.

  “No task should be more important than familiarizing a landowner with his estate, sir.”

  “We are in agreement, then. We’ll ride out in the mornings, provided the weather is fair, and you can show me more of the land. I’d also like you to introduce me to the people, of course, including the tenant farmers, the tradesmen, and the neighbors. We must see to the account books, which I’ve yet to locate, and the—what now? I’ve barely got out two consecutive sentences, Miss Tanner, and already I note an unattractive set to your chin.”

  Loris did look at him, resenting that he remained on his feet until she realized that even in his own home, even in her company, he might have been waiting for permission to be seated.

  “Introductions to the neighbors are not my place, Baron.”

  “Why not? You live here, I am recently arrived, and somebody must squire me about until I know who goes with which estate.”

  Embarrassment swept up Loris’s neck and heated her cheeks. “I wouldn’t know how to go on.”

  “You wouldn’t…?”

  A silence, while the baron considered, and Loris blushed, and allowed her resentment to crest just short of loathing for forcing the admission from her. She did not loathe Sutcliffe, but she loathed the situation.

  “Do you wish to learn how to go on?” his lordship asked.

  What was he—former manager of a brothel—asking?

  “Why should I learn how to properly serve a cup of tea,” Loris said, “or make small talk of children and the weather? I will never have children, and whereas other women consider the weather a safe, dull topic, I consider it fascinating. We live and die by the weather, starve or grow rich. How mundane is that?”

  Her employer regarded her for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Show me your hands.”

  Loris mentally fumbled around for a retort, but she was too slow, and the dratted man had her hands gently but firmly gripped in his. He raised them for a thorough inspection.

  “You have the hands of a lady,” he observed, “which is no small feat, considering how much of your day you spend in the saddle, in the barns, in the fields, or otherwise out of doors.”

  “I wear gloves,” Loris replied, dread mixing with something else at the feel of his fingers wrapped around hers. “I abhor gratuitous dirt.”

  He leaned in and—of all the unseemly displays—took a whiff of her. “You have the fragrance of a lady, and you speak like a lady, at least in your diction and vocabulary. I suspect, Loris Tanner, you would like to be a lady in truth.”

  She stood and snatched her hands back before pacing the length of the room and whirling on him.

  “I see no point in trying to make a silk purse out of this market sow’s ear, my lord. I work, and ladies don’t work. Ladies don’t see what I see in the course of a day. They don’t walk through manure and determine if milk is dripping from a mare’s udder, or clean a gelding’s sheath to spare him the ham-handed groom’s attentions. I am not a lady.”

  Sutcliffe’s expression was inscrutable, when Loris had barely managed to keep her voice down. He wasn’t taunting her, not on purpose, but neither did he, titled, wealthy, handsome, and male, know what impossibilities he asked of her.

  He regarded her steadily, the way Loris kept her gaze on a green horse giving a saddle its first delicate sniffing over.

  “Hear me out, Miss Tanner, and come sit, if you please, so I needn’t shout the length of the room to discuss this with you.”

  Loris resumed her seat near the baron’s desk, though that concession cost her, for his thighs remained uncomfortably near, and they were muscular thighs.

  What was wrong with her?

  “You are now gainfully employed as a steward on this estate,” Sutcliffe began, “and if I find your services adequate, you could continue in this position for some years. But I might sell the property, I might find another steward I like better. I might be such a difficult taskmaster you’re too unhappy to continue with your duties, and then, Miss Tanner, what options have you?”

  “I can work elsewhere.” Though not as a steward. Women did not find employment as stewards. They might own their dower estates, manage for an absent or incompetent husband, and take a hand in things, but no decent, proper woman admitted to stewardship of real property as her means of support even if that was the case in fact.

  “Where will you work, madam? Greymoor’s cousin became a manager of sorts on her grandfather’s estate, simply because she had grown up there, and Greymoor was out of the country when other provisions might have been made. Were it anyone other than Guinevere Hollister who traveled down here with Amery, you would have lost your position last autumn.”

  Sutcliffe chose then to fall silent, which was uncharitable of him. Just as Loris considered fussing with the drape of her skirt, he resumed his lecture.

  “You found the one estate in all of England where the owner would even consider permitting you to continue in your father’s position, even temporarily. Do you expect to find another?”

  “No,” she bit out, rising. “I know how fortunate I am, and what an unusual situation I have. I never sought the position of steward here at Linden, my lord, but the crops would have rotted in the fields if I hadn’t stepped into to manage in Papa’s absence. None of the men were willing to do as much, and now I am the best-qualified resource for the steward’s tasks, whether you call me your steward or not. You understand this.”

  “I do,” he said, with ominous gentleness, “but my dear, I could be tossed from my horse tomorrow, and my estate might pass into the hands of some old lecher who believes women should be kept meek and silent. You need an alternative plan.”

  Men died. They disappeared, they were set upon by thieves, they fell ill. Loris could not imagine his lordship coming to gri
ef from the back of a horse, but he had—damn and drat him—made a valid point.

  Loris’s father had been strutting about the village green one day and nowhere to be found the next.

  “I cannot accept that snabbling a man with my pretty manners and empty head is a suitable alternative plan,” Loris said, again indulging in the compulsion to pace. Why must she sound so forlorn, when marriage had never been a possibility for her? “I have no wish to marry. I have no dowry. I am fortunate I have passed the age where anyone expects me to even try to find a spouse.”

  “How old are you?” More of Sutcliffe’s soft, handsome voice—a voice that hinted at concern and confidences. The women whom he’d known in that den of vice must have taught him the power of that voice.

  “Five-and-twenty.”

  “Not so old as all that. If you were a man—”

  “If I were a man. ” Loris crossed her arms rather than raise a hand to her employer. “Those are the five most useless words in a woman’s vocabulary. I will never be a man, nor would I wish to be.”

  “You don’t want to be a man, and you say you don’t want to be a lady. What do you want to be?”

  Loris turned away from Sutcliffe to face out the doors. While she made the baron wait for her answer, the scent of lavender drifted in from the summer day. Beyond the manor’s gardens, the pastures, fields, and home wood made a bucolic tableau of peace and plenty.

  She hadn’t been quite honest with him. While the steward’s position had never been her goal, the care of all that fertile ground and healthy livestock had beckoned to her. She’d wanted to see Linden thrive, season by season, the same way a mother anticipated her child’s first words and first steps.

  Lord Sutcliffe was not Loris’s enemy. He did not deserve her ire. He deserved her loyalty and respect.

  Also the truth, to the extent she knew the truth.

  “I want to be safe,” she said. “I want to know that my informed judgment will not be questioned by some fat, swaggering idiot with a bullwhip, when all I seek is to keep an innocent animal from avoidable misery. I want to know that any London dandy who comes to the neighborhood will not presume on my person.

  “I want to know that my manners and conversation are adequate,” she went on, “that I won’t become the butt of the local gentry’s jokes when I open my mouth at the assemblies or in the market, that I will have something to say to the ladies my age besides inappropriate remarks about the lambing and calving.”

  Loris leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, abruptly weary of the baron, the heat, and her own recitation.

  “If I can’t have these things, Baron Sutcliffe, then all I want is to be left alone.”

  * * *

  In extensive travel as a man of business for a wealthy lord, Thomas had made the acquaintance of many beautiful women. Some were sufficiently attractive to marry great fortunes, others used their looks to garner wealth in different ways.

  Those ladies all made the same mistake: They believed their beauty evident only when they were beheld from the front. Whether they emphasized entrancing eyes, a spectacular figure, or classically perfect features, they lacked faith in their appeal from within—or from behind.

  The nape of a woman’s neck could be fascinating, the flare of her hips irresistible. The curve of her spine might give a man many sleepless nights, and the line of her shoulders could say much about the burdens she carried or the self-respect that sustained her.

  Loris Tanner’s folly was worse than most, for she failed to note her appeal from any angle, while Thomas could have studied her for hours.

  She bore aloneness in her very posture, back erect, shoulders set, tidy braid hanging straight down her spine. He wanted to comfort her, and yet, she’d probably snarl and snap if he so much as touched her shoulder.

  Which was in part his fault. He’d been humoring her as if she were one of Fairly’s professional women when restless between favorites. Worse yet, Thomas had been amusing himself at Miss Tanner’s expense, thinking her a quaint, rural eccentric. A woman he could tease at his pleasure, one who hissed and spat and blushed, and then expounded with astonishing knowledge on agrarian topics.

  She wanted, for good reasons, to be left alone, and in every movement, glance, and word choice, she enshrouded herself in solitariness.

  Loris Tanner wasn’t alone as a widow was alone. The widow had a past association with a man to give her status and memories. Nor was she alone as young ladies were, teetering on the brink of courtship and marriage, full of dreams, potential, and hope. She wasn’t alone in the manner of a maiden aunt, deriving meaning from a tangential contribution to extended family.

  Loris Tanner’s aloneness was that of an orphan, of a person who deserved a different set of circumstances, but was powerless to bring them about.

  Thomas knew how that felt, knew the rage and bewilderment of it.

  “I can’t change the nature of the London fribbles,” he said, turning her by the shoulders. “I can’t assure you that you will never have another surly employee, but the etiquette and polish that will earn you the respect of your peers, the women and men who consider themselves polite society around here, I can give you that.”

  Misty gray eyes studied a spot behind Thomas’s shoulder. “Why would you?”

  He’d hoped for grudging gratitude—more fool he. “Perhaps so I can marry you off, and rid myself of the only female steward in the realm, whether she admits to that title or not.”

  Miss Tanner’s glower was magnificent. She could have quelled riots with that fiery, disdainful, righteous expression—or started them.

  “I never wanted to be a steward, sir. I did the job because nobody else was on hand with the proper knowledge, and for my efforts, I am an embarrassment to you.”

  She had freckles across her nose, freckles of the kissable, countable variety, which she probably hated.

  “You are not an embarrassment to me, Miss Tanner.” A puzzle, a challenge, a conundrum, not an embarrassment. “I suspect, however, you frequently embarrass yourself.”

  “You would rehabilitate me? Why would you take on such a thankless project? I am no relation to you. I would know your motives, my lord.”

  Fair question, which Thomas would ponder another time, when it wouldn’t cost him his momentum in their argument.

  “By way of explanation, or perhaps analogy, let me explain to you why I no longer manage a brothel.”

  She took a step back, but didn’t cede the verbal field entirely.

  “My employer,” Thomas began, “David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, became enamored of the madam he hired for his brothel. Mind you, she was not his mistress. He sought to marry her. In the course of their courtship, it was pointed out to Fairly that running a brothel is a logical contradiction for a gentleman. If honor requires that a man protect the weak, and use his influence only for good, then exploiting women who have fallen outside the bounds of decency is the worst sort of lapse.”

  Miss Tanner resumed her seat before the desk, which meant Thomas could study the interesting line of her jaw when she was at the limit of her patience with her employer.

  “Fine for the viscount,” she said. “I suppose he was in love and willing to appease his lady with moral reform, but what has that to do with you?”

  Thomas took the chair beside hers, an un-cushioned, spindle-backed and damned uncomfortable seat.

  “Fairly wasn’t appeasing his lady, he was appeasing his conscience.”

  “And you will appease yours, by rescuing me from my bumpkinhood?”

  No bumpkin reasoned so nimbly, or fearlessly.

  “Perhaps I will give myself a steward with drawing-room polish, or perhaps I will reform you right into the arms of some local worthy, who can promise you a life free of hog wallows and manure pits.”

  She looked puzzled, as if she’d miss her hog wallows and manure pits were they taken from her.

  “The point, Miss Tanner, is that you should have a choice. You may choose to
work out your days here, the housemaids and stable hands your only companions, or you may choose to circulate in the local society and comport yourself as something other than an oddity. Your father apparently socialized as a gentleman would, and you should enjoy a feminine version of the same privilege.”

  Thomas ought to have left Loris Tanner’s father out of the conversation, but common sense weighed in favor of having options, for the lord of the manor, the yeoman putting in crops, or the prostitute on the stroll. Miss Tanner would be tempted in part because her father had left her no options.

  And yet, Thomas had dangled before her a lure he himself had long ago turned his back on: acceptance by polite society.

  “You may attempt to explain a few matters of etiquette to me,” Miss Tanner said, “though don’t expect me to spend much time at this project. Managing your estate is a busy undertaking, Baron, and I won’t have you criticizing me for slacking as a steward as well as being unable to stand up at the assemblies. The land must take precedence.”

  This oversight, this gap in her social skills, was no small handicap in a rural community, and yet her own father could easily have spared her the awkwardness.

  “You can’t dance?”

  “I don’t know the steps, and learning them at the expense of my neighbors doesn’t seem fair.”

  Such a public education would be unfair—to her. “When is the next assembly?”

  “We have them monthly during fair weather, the first Saturday of every month.”

  Miss Tanner knew the schedule, and probably made sure to have a great deal to do on those first Saturdays.

  “That gives me our first goal,” Thomas said. “At the August assembly, Loris Tanner, you will dance.”

  With him . Thomas would see that she also danced with others, but of a certainty, she would dance with him.

  “We wasted only the entire morning reaching that decision,” she said, popping up and moving to the French doors—and away from Thomas. “If you’ll excuse me, I must pay out the wages for the stablemen and the gardeners, and then they’ll take their half day.”

  “Then you’ll join me for luncheon.”