Bell thought she might climb out of her skin and run away. She glanced out the window to be certain Kit hadn’t set fire to the baggage carriage carrying the servants. She’d been amazed that Quent had still been willing to lend his equipment.
“Lady Camilla is desperate. I thought I made that clear. Proper ladies do not trap husbands. It’s not only very bad ton, it’s hare-brained. Men resent wives who force marriage on them. You are not desperate.”
“Yes, we are!” Tess stood up for her sister. “We don’t want to go to Scotland to some stranger or to a horrid school. We want to stay here, together. Lord Quentin said he might have our guardianship if he married, so why shouldn’t he marry me?”
“We didn’t know you were having an affair!” Syd cried. “How could we know? You act as if you dislike him.”
“I do not,” Bell answered crossly. “We are the oldest of friends. And we were not having an affair. I just wanted to protect him from your foolishness.”
“Then marry him,” Tess said in the same peevish tone. “Then we needn’t worry about going to Scotland. We thought to save you from having to marry for our sakes, but if you’re friends anyway, why not?”
Excellent question, one too difficult to answer. How could a woman of her years claim to be holding out for love? She was well past the age of romantic silliness.
“We have different interests,” Bell answered, sounding petulant even to herself. “I spend money. He saves it. Marriage would destroy our friendship.”
That settled the argument for the time being. Her sisters knew all about men who spent money. Men who didn’t want to spend it were beyond their ken.
Which made Bell the reckless spendthrift like her father. Fine. So, she was the villain here. A villain valiantly attempting to do what was right for her family, she tried to tell herself.
But she had to admit that she was lying. She was running away from the way Quent caused her to lose control and indulge in the reckless, dangerous urges of her youth.
Running away was a coward’s way out, and she really was too old and wise in the ways of the world to believe in love and romance. Requiring love was simply another means of running away, she supposed.
With a sigh, Bell mentally composed a business letter that would link her fortune with Quent’s. The letter wasn’t pretty. How could she turn the perfect night they’d shared into a negotiation? It went against the grain.
She’d have to have Summerby write it.
***
Back in London a few days later, Quent crumpled Summerby’s damned letter and paced his study. “Why am I doing this?” he asked. “I’m perfectly fine as I am. She’s the one who needs me.”
Penrose dropped a stack of documents on the desk and imitated Quent’s inelegant snort. “Right you are. You pace like a testy stallion. You haven’t gone after the steamboat deal since I presented it to you. You nearly snapped off your housekeeper’s head when she merely asked if you wanted to call in a window cleaner. I think the lady has you by the bollocks.”
Worse, the lady had hit him where it hurt—in his pride. He’d been so damned certain he could prove that she wouldn’t want to leave his bed that he’d never given any other result a consideration.
He certainly wanted back in her bed again. Bell in the height of passion—was more glorious than racing yachts on the high seas. He wanted to paint her naked and hang the image over his bed, if only he could paint.
He couldn’t believe she didn’t feel the same. Pride goeth before a fall, indeed. He’d spent years imagining how he’d teach her the pleasures her old goat of a husband hadn’t. He didn’t see how he could be so wrong. Bell wasn’t the cold conniver this letter said she was—unless he really was thinking with his cock and not with the brain that had conquered London. He glared at the legal letter and flung it at the painting of his yacht on the wall.
He should be out generating cash for the family fortress, not fretting over feckless females. Alliteration. Maybe he should take up poetry.
He was losing his mind. And his focus. He couldn’t afford to lose his focus.
He picked up his father’s most recent letter. I’ll buy my own roof, the bold handwriting declared. I already have two offers for Tess’s hand—Angus—one of Quent’s nephews who was still in school—and Mackie—a widower cousin with half a dozen children to raise. A dower of the same two thousand pounds a year the dowager gave her protégées should save a fortune once I have Mackie off my hands! I have someone looking into the boy’s lands. Between them, that will buy the roof. Send them to me—now!
Quent had a notion that the Boyles would shoot his father and cousin before they married either of them. How far would he have to run to avoid the war?
He’d originally thought of Bell as the perfect wife because she was independent and he needn’t spend time worrying about her. Now the damned woman was flaunting her independence with this wretched settlement letter, and it was damned well interfering with his ability to negotiate with his infuriating father.
“Write a counter offer,” Penrose suggested, jarring Quent from his reverie.
Quent didn’t want to negotiate anymore. He wanted nothing short of complete capitulation. Immediately.
The study was suffocating. He loosened his neckcloth and continued pacing.
“My father will be hiring a new representative to enforce his guardianship if I don’t act soon.” Quent tried to make this strategy work in his head, but threats never worked with Bell.
“I’d start figuring out a counteroffer for that marital duty only once a week clause,” Penrose said, not bothering to hide his amusement.
His aide had hit the sorest point of all. Quent picked up Summerby’s crumpled settlement letter and flung it on the empty grate. “Send my father a reply telling him Bell will not dower her sisters if he won’t surrender his guardianship, but she’ll dower Sally and Elizabeth if I control the guardianship. And there will be no roof forthcoming until such time as the matter is settled.”
“I can hear his roar now,” Penrose said with a wince.
Quent grabbed his hat off the stand. “I’m taking the yacht to Essex. If you want to join us, take the Friesian and your mount by road.”
He stalked out, leaving Penrose still protesting.
He damned well didn’t need to be negotiating with both Bell and his father. This had to stop or he’d never earn another farthing.
Quent debated taking his own lawyer with him to hammer home his demands, but he didn’t have the patience for arguing. Besides, marriage was between a man and a woman, not a couple of solicitors. He just needed to remind the lady of that.
Racing his sailboat down the Thames to the Channel returned his perspective. With the wind in his hair and the sun on his face, he was almost the boy he’d been long ago, in a faraway place. He hoped he was smarter than that boy had been, because he was about to make a rare fool of himself otherwise.
***
“Bell, Bell, there’s a cart coming up the drive,” Syd cried, racing down the corridor of the rambling manse.
Bell scowled at a bird’s nest on top of the china cabinet in the butler’s pantry. “I haven’t ordered any deliveries. The footmen can handle it.”
“The same strapping footmen who are afraid to remove that nest?” Syd asked cynically. “I think you should have left them in London.”
Bell hated it when her sisters were right. “They know how to answer doors. As soon as I can hire a few country lads, we’ll straighten this place out.” She hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that they’d be here long enough to hire more people.
She hadn’t wanted to admit that she wouldn’t be returning to her civilized city home any time soon.
Syd flitted around the enormous pantry, lifting silver platters and candelabra and ornaments even Bell couldn’t name. “I love it here! I can only remember a little of our home in Wexford, but I imagined it just like this—with endless chambers and room to run and no one looking disapprovingly down their
noses at me.”
“I’ll look disapprovingly down my nose if you run and break your silly neck. Make yourself useful and examine the linen closet. Anything with holes goes to the church. Tell me how many good linens are left.”
“Not enough,” Syd said cheerfully. “We used them all on our beds. But I’ll fetch a basket to load the others in.”
She danced off. Bell was thrilled to see her happy. She was less than thrilled to be returned to filth and decay. As a child, she’d practically lived in the stable and never tended the house. She had never dealt with bird and wasp nests, pumps that didn’t pump, drains that didn’t drain, and holes in the roof.
Since her marriage, she’d hired excellent servants to handle the city household. But Edward had let the entailed country manse deteriorate. He’d never visited here, so neither had she. After his death, she’d taken a look at the place, shuddered, and left it alone. It had seemed a waste of funds if she couldn’t leave the estate to charity or her sisters’ offspring.
Quent’s family now owned the land entailed to Belden Hall. She possessed only a life estate. The house was their problem—unless she wanted to live here.
Until now, she hadn’t been so inclined. She would rather invest her funds in people than things. But she would need green pastures for Little Dream. The pastures might as well be her own, since it was obvious she couldn’t inflict her sisters on society, or vice versa, until they had a little more polish. She’d had Fitz deliver their horses here.
Bell hoped Edward’s Aunt Griselda could help with polishing her sisters’ behavior while lending propriety to the household, but Boyles would always be Boyles. Perhaps she should send them back to Wexford.
Not without wealthy husbands.
Kit’s war whoop warned he’d escaped the classroom again. Tess arrived in the pantry wearing a worried expression, a certain sign that trouble loomed on the horizon.
“It’s Lord Quentin,” Tess whispered. “He arrived in a cart. I can’t tell him to go away, can I?”
Oh, devil take it, why couldn’t that interfering man let her think?
Remembering the letter that Summerby had sent him, Bell quailed and abandoned the pantry. “The footmen have forgotten how to answer the door?” she asked, striding briskly toward the foyer, trying to hide her nervousness. “And why a cart? We sent his carriage back to him.”
Even as she said it, Bell knew—Quent had arrived on his yacht. Which meant he’d needed to race off his fury and arrive here faster than horseback. That wasn’t promising.
In trepidation, Bell approached the front door. She had no elegant visitor’s parlor to greet him in. Belden’s medieval hall was worse than Fitz’s rambling shambles.
“You weren’t invited,” she caustically told Quent when she reached the foyer to see him doffing his hat and handing his walking stick to her sturdy footman.
He looked marvelously windblown and sunburned, and her heart nearly tripped over itself in its eagerness to leap from her chest. What would it feel like to be clasped in his embrace, as if this were truly a homecoming?
She had to rid herself of these romantic notions. He was probably here to kill her.
“That’s odd,” he replied cheerfully, leaning over to peck her cheek as if he had that right. “I thought certain the letter from your solicitor was an open invitation. You are looking beautifully harassed, my dear.”
Bell knew better than anyone how civilized behavior could hide a multitude of sins. At least he didn’t throttle her in front of family. “I’m not your dear anything. We have no extra linen. The beds are full of mice. And my cook refused to leave town. She says she can only cook in a real kitchen, not a country hovel. You’ll just have to turn around and go home.”
“I’ll have to take you to Scotland someday. We mend our threadbare linen and just spit and roast whatever died that day.” He bowed to Tess. “How do you do, little sister? Are the grooms keeping you from racing your new mare?”
Tess glanced uncertainly from him to Bell, then dipped a quick curtsy. “We are still learning the land. It would be dangerous to race without knowing the course. I’ll help Syd with the linen.”
She hastened off, leaving Bell and Quent to stare at each other. Bell felt awkward. He seemed his usual over-confident self.
“Words to live by?” he asked with a quizzical lift of his eyebrow. “Should we learn the lay of the land before racing the course?”
“We know the lay of the land,” Bell said irritably. “And if you have some notion of staying, then you’ll have to work with the rest of us.” She stalked back to the pantry.
“The apron is quite a domestic touch. I like it,” he said, striding along beside her, reminding her of how much larger and broader he was.
Manly, masculine, physically capable—all those things she wasn’t and the reason she’d hired strapping young footmen, who were apparently useless out of the city. “Don’t let the apron fool you. I still wield a horsewhip better than a duster. But men have their uses.”
She pointed at the broom she’d abandoned when she’d answered the door, then pointed out the bird’s nest and cobwebs well above her reach.
He dragged a massive walnut chair from the dining room and climbed up on it to swat the filth to the floor.
The chair leg snapped with a loud crack. Quent and bird nest toppled toward her. She shrieked and tried to break his fall with her hands. He rattled the contents of the dish cabinet by catching the corner in an attempt to slow his descent. Terrified they were all about to die, Bell hastily backed against the wall, away from the swaying cupboard.
Releasing his grip before he toppled anything else, Quent hit the floor, boots first. He staggered into Bell, pushing her up against the wall.
Too shaken by the freakish accident, Bell instinctively wrapped her arms around his waist. “You could have broken your fool neck,” she muttered, burying her head against his shoulder, as if that would prevent him from falling again. She swore furiously while he grasped her shoulders and breathed a little harder than normal. She could hear his heart pound.
He held her tighter than necessary, but she wasn’t inclined to shove away just yet. She’d had flashes of seeing him cracking his skull, and she hadn’t quite caught her breath. She didn’t wish to let him go. “The place is dangerous.”
“Life is short. We should take advantage of every minute,” he countered.
Before she could react, he lifted her chin and kissed her, a kiss that started at her lips and burned clear down to curl her toes. She was breathing heavily by the time she pushed away. But she no longer feared for his neck.
She took a deep breath and pushed away.
“This is ridiculous, spooning in the pantry like adolescents.” She dusted herself off, glanced at the broken chair, and stalked back to the main dining room to glare at the sheet-covered furniture. “It’s probably all got wood rot.”
She spoke coolly, but her blood was racing so fast, she thought she might give in to the vapors. How could he do this to her?
“I could stand on each one and test it,” Quent suggested with amusement, picking up another chair and bringing it down hard on the wood floor. The floor creaked. “But I want two kisses for the next one that breaks and three for the third. And a whole lot more than that if the floor caves in.”
He was needling her over the contract she’d had Summerby send.
She swung on him and smacked his broad—hard—chest. “Stop it, stop it this instant. I have agreed to negotiate the possibility of marriage. That’s as much as I have agreed. This is not a love affair. This isn’t remotely romantic. We’re two sensible people admitting marriage might be convenient.”
“I admit no such thing. Marriage is a terrific inconvenience as far as I can see,” he growled, glaring down at her. “I’ll be stuck with two families demanding my time and attention, hosts of vaporish females running in and out, and a shrew of a wife who will want to spend every farthing I earn. The only pleasure I can hope to gain b
y marriage, you want to deny me. So let’s start there.”
He hoisted her from the floor and stomped back through the pantry toward the servants’ stairs with Bell pounding his back and attempting to bite his ear off.
Fifteen
Damn, but Bell was a raw handful of female. Her delicious bosom bounced against his shoulder as she twisted and attempted to either unman him or bite off his head—although her nibbles were more erotic than painful. He stumbled on a step when her tongue reached his ear.
He was fortunate she’d kept her shoes on or the sight of her bare toes might cripple him entirely. He’d be forced to take her right there on the servants’ stairs. Just the notion that he might have that right raised Quent’s spirits. He cupped her firm round bottom to hold her in place, and for the first time since childhood, he felt almost giddy with absurd joy.
He knew he was acting out of bruised pride, but Bell’s kiss hadn’t been forced. She’d reacted to his tumble with concern, embraced him with affection, and kissed him with passion. That’s all he’d needed to bolster his confidence. She was wrong to deny what was between them. He was right to demand they push past whatever invisible hobgoblin existed in her ridiculous head.
Except Bell was never ridiculous. That recognition took some of the steam out of his fun. Then he reached the landing for the private floors, saw the long corridor of doors, and realized he had no idea which chamber was hers.
The American earl put an end to any further notions of intimate entertainment. Kit raced down at them from the next flight of stairs, whooping and hollering and brandishing . . . a rolling pin?
“Separate houses,” he muttered, setting Bell down on the landing carpet. “One for us, one for them.” He caught the brat on the second step up, before he could behead anyone.
“Where’s your tutor?” he demanded, turning the whooping boy upside down and proceeding upward, abandoning a disheveled Bell. At least she wasn’t shrieking at him.
He should probably be grateful to the lordling for preventing him from a rash action that would have ruined everything, but he wasn’t feeling grateful. He was feeling deprived and set upon, like a boy who had just had his snowball fight interrupted by chores.
Formidable Lord Quentin Page 13
