Harlequin Historical February 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Virginia Heath

  ‘England is at war with Napoleon and America simultaneously, Miss Brookes—there is much to do and not enough hours in the day to do it.’ It was the longest sentence he had uttered thus far and by his expression he wasn’t happy to have strung so many words together solely for her entertainment. Those expressive green eyes were irritated. It was obvious he held her and her work in little esteem. How typical he would look down his nose at her. Almost-earls were all the same.

  ‘I am curious, my lord…’ More unpalatable truth which she couldn’t quite believe, although she slowly opened her notebook rather than stare at him like she wanted to, and began to jot down the new dimensions for the canvas to let him know he wasn’t that riveting and she wasn’t at all bothered by his censure or his presence, nor was she the least bit impressed with his title. ‘How does one fight a war abroad from the comfort of one’s armchair in Mayfair?’

  At his absolute best, he was a bureaucrat, not a soldier. One who likely made life-or-death decisions from a distance with the impersonal stroke of a pen—just as he had impersonally disposed of his wife. A cruel fact her silly pulse could well do with remembering. Whatever he did in Whitehall, he likely only did it to feather his own nest. If he had aspirations of political power to go alongside that which already came from his wealth and status, as the newspapers had hinted at time and time again, then the inconvenience of an apprenticeship in a ministry was par for the course. An important rung on the ladder. A token show of commitment before he manoeuvred his annoyingly taut behind into a seat in the government alongside the other hereditary lords who ran the country without any serious thought for the millions they supposedly ran it for. ‘Aren’t you a tad withdrawn from the action to be of any real use?’ She slanted him a glance and was pleased to see her well-aimed barb had made his compelling green eyes narrow, while something hot and dangerously human swirled molten within them.

  ‘Armies march on their stomachs and cannot fight without bullets. It is one of my responsibilities to ensure they receive the necessary supplies to do their jobs properly.’ As if anticipating her disappointment in his explanation, his chin lifted defiantly. ‘It is not the most exciting of occupations, Miss Brookes, but I can assure you it is one that is most essential for the war effort.’

  ‘I suppose that makes you a strategist, Lord Eastwood.’ Her gaze resolutely still on her notes because his unyielding gaze was just too unnerving, Faith shifted her position slightly so she could surreptitiously study him better in her peripheral vision. Would calling him a Whitehall warrior be a step too far? Probably. ‘I should imagine such a Herculean task involves a great deal of strategising and planning.’ Which doubtless involved more nudges, winks and pompous, self-aggrandising backslapping in White’s or Brooks’s than actual work. In the ton, it wasn’t what you knew which garnered the most reward, it was who. And if you weren’t a who, you were ultimately inconsequential and therefore disposable.

  ‘It does.’ His handsome features rearranged themselves back to severely put upon rather than defensive. ‘Two things which require order and quiet, Miss Brookes.’

  She could tell already working near Lord Beastly was going to be a delight. ‘Well, unless you have the sudden urge to strategise here in this ballroom, I think you can be assured of both, sir. Is your private study close by?’ Because hell would have to freeze over before she ventured near that part of the house.

  ‘Unfortunately, it is just along the hall. We are to be neighbours, Miss Brookes.’ This was accompanied by another curt head jerk to the left, causing Faith to stifle a smile. She couldn’t help it. He was as stodgy as a treacle pudding and more self-important than any man she had ever met—no mean feat when she had encountered quite a few. If it weren’t for his eyes, which spoiled his attempts at calm inscrutability completely, she would have assumed him entirely emotionless and stiff. But those eyes were anything but.

  They were dangerously compelling.

  ‘You have my solemn pledge I shall never darken that door under any circumstances.’ A promise she was suddenly relieved to make. She had never been so physically aware of a man in her life.

  ‘See that you don’t.’

  She should have left it at that.

  Should have but didn’t. It was the flicker of triumph on his expression which did it. The sanctimonious, entitled arrogance that felt too painfully familiar, which in turn made her rebellious nature and stubborn pride chafe at his brusque order.

  ‘Is this the fabled affable side of your character which you are supposed to be showing me, Lord Eastwood?’

  She watched his jaw clench as his dark eyebrows furrowed. ‘I have just the one side, Miss Brookes.’ Arms still stubbornly crossed over his chest, he drew himself up to his impressive full height. ‘What you see is what you get.’

  ‘How disappointing.’ Even though she knew baiting him was not the best course of action, and despite her promise to her father to behave professionally, she couldn’t appear to help herself. As expected, he was beyond insufferable and in dire need of knocking down a peg or two with his dismissive, superior and surly attitude, never mind that something about him set her wildly off-kilter. ‘And there I was hoping you would make some effort to make me at least try to find something to like about you.’

  The dark head tilted, those intelligent, hypnotic and suddenly stormy eyes holding hers unbending. ‘And what, pray tell, would be the point of that, Miss Brookes? When you, like everyone else, have already prejudged me in the lofty court of public opinion, and have already concluded that there is absolutely nothing about me to like?’

  He had her there and that truth, so honestly and plainly spoken, left her momentarily speechless. And bizarrely ashamed, although she couldn’t fathom why. She had prejudged him. Of course she had, and with good reason—but the whole of London had also done the same. In view of his callous behaviour towards a helpless woman, how could they not? Yet she knew how it felt to be prejudged and knew too, it wasn’t pleasant. Especially if the prejudgement was entirely unfair.

  He watched her pause and mistook her momentary doubt as confirmation. ‘Admit it, madam. I have been duly weighed, measured and found wanting.’ That steady gaze was now daring her to agree—or perhaps hoping she might not. ‘Let us not pretend it could possibly be otherwise.’

  ‘Are you suggesting all the reports about you are untrue, Lord Eastwood?’ Because they both knew there had been a great many, and some of them quite atrocious. You could fool some of the people all of the time after all, but not all of them, and there was no denying he and his unsuitable wife were now definitely quite divorced.

  ‘I am not suggesting anything, Miss Brookes—merely stating the facts. You came here today with firm opinions which you are absolutely entitled to have, based on a glut of irrefutable evidence I confess I cannot be bothered to read, let alone attempt to redress.’ A fact, she realised with a start, which was entirely true. In all the time she had devoured those irrefutable newspaper reports, it had never occurred to her before now that Lord Eastwood, despite his powerful connections, hadn’t once made the effort to refute any of them. At least not that she had seen. Nor had anybody else for that matter. Why had he remained silent?

  Either he knew there was no defending the indefensible or he was just too arrogant and really did not care, or he was astute enough to have known there was no point in even attempting to put forward a defence because nobody really cared to hear it.

  The scandal was just too delicious, the news so shocking, the papers had relentlessly pursued it because they knew it would sell. Yet she also knew the truth was often by the by as far as the press were concerned. Knew that through intensely personal experience too. How many times had they printed balderdash about her and her family in the past? Just this morning they were filled with more rumours about her impending engagement to Edward based on yesterday’s innocuous, brief and unplanned collision at the British Museum. Nonsense groun
ded only tenuously in truth for which they were wholly unrepentant and all because the Brookes family lived among the forward-thinking, fashionable, artistic and decadent types in Bloomsbury, so therefore must be wholly decadent themselves as a matter of course. All so laughable they had laughed about it around the dining table—even when at times the wild accusations weren’t particularly funny at all—because Papa was a firm believer in only fighting the fights you could win rather than adding fuel to a fire which would inevitably burn itself out if ignored.

  Had Lord Beastly been similarly maligned? Was he that pragmatic? That fatalistic?

  That misunderstood?

  Her sudden and surprising flash of sympathy had to be misguided.

  It wasn’t as if she were comparing like with like when their situations were entirely different. The gossip about her family was born out of rumour and speculation which usually came after something innocuous witnessed at a social gathering, then amplified and misconstrued as it spread around the drawing rooms of the ton who routinely looked down on those who lived on the periphery. It was tenuous and flimsy and, like smoke without a decent fire beneath it, swiftly disappeared.

  His came from a very different route—the irrefutable divorce petition which he put before Parliament and the subsequent proceedings which had been cast into law for all to see.

  His was fact, not gossip. A man as well connected as he, from a family as esteemed as his, and a future earl no less, would surely move heaven and earth to protect that reputation if he were able?

  ‘Even in the lofty court of public opinion, my lord, you have the right to rebuttal.’

  He stared at her then as if she had gone quite mad before he slowly shook his head. ‘No, Miss Brookes, I do not.’

  Was that an admission of guilt? For all his standoffishness, and much to her consternation, he didn’t strike her as particularly malevolent irrespective of what had been written to the contrary. She had encountered it a time or two, when one lived on the fringes of society it was impossible not to because all the flotsam and jetsam of society tended to gather there alongside the creative, the individual and the academic. Malevolent had always raised her well-honed hackles but had never made her pulse quicken quite so fervently before. ‘Should I take you as entirely guilty as charged then, Lord Eastwood?’

  ‘You will undoubtedly take me exactly as you see fit, Miss Brookes.’

  ‘That is an infuriating answer, my lord.’

  ‘I am told I am an infuriating man, Miss Brookes.’

  Faith stared back at him, searching his face for any clue to the truth of his character until she became transfixed on his eyes once again. It was obvious there was something hidden in those unfathomable mossy depths. But was it really disdain? Or simply defeat? Or even disappointment with the world in general? She couldn’t say—but it intrigued her. He intrigued her. Undoubtedly a great deal more than a complete blackguard should.

  They stared at each other for several strangely loaded seconds until the storm in his unusual eyes calmed and his expression became annoyingly bland once more. ‘As scintillating as our conversation has been, Miss Brookes, I have neglected my work long enough and my armchair awaits.’

  He bowed curtly and turned to leave, then thought better of it. There was no mistaking the emotion on his face this time.

  It was contempt.

  ‘I would say it has been a pleasure meeting you, Miss Brookes, but for all my many, many, many well-documented flaws, lying isn’t one of them.’

  Then without further ado and with a thunderous expression, and before she could articulate a suitably pithy response, her new nemesis stalked to the door and, to her complete horror, straight into her father.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Invitations went out this morning for the Earl and Countess of Writtle’s Annual May Ball. Doubtless we can expect a veritable exodus of society from town on the first of May, or thereabouts, as all those not worthy enough to have received one pretend they are otherwise engaged…

  Whispers from Behind the Fan

  February 1814

  Distracted by the continued sounds of hammering in the ballroom from the battalion of workmen who were apparently necessary to build a mere structure for the canvas, Piers huffed again. ‘While I will admit it wasn’t my finest hour, in my defence I was provoked. The sanctimonious Miss Brookes had been looking down her nose at me all morning and something snapped.’

  ‘That doesn’t excuse it. And to be fair to her, you were in a foul mood long before she arrived.’

  ‘And surely that’s the point? I was in a bad mood before she arrived, Isobel, which got worse because of her haughty, judgemental behaviour and was then only made truly foul when my dear mother decided to try her hand at matchmaking and forced Miss Brookes upon me.’ Piers felt his toes curl involuntarily at the memory, knowing his wily mother must have noticed he had been wildly attracted to her in the first place. ‘You know acute embarrassment always brings out the worst in me.’

  ‘Your mother asked you to show Miss Brookes a wall—not marry her.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Even my mother is not that unsubtle! But I can assure you, in suggesting I showed that artist my affable side, the implication was implicit.’

  ‘I don’t think it was. If you read more into it, then perhaps that is because you rather fancied the look of Miss Brookes yourself but are too stubborn to admit it—even to yourself. Therefore, once you were alone with her you panicked and made a royal hash of things.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ It would be a cold day in hell before he admitted he had rather fancied the look of her and that had made him panic. Which in turn had made him angry. Which had resulted in the most shocking display of rudeness towards a lady he had ever perpetrated.

  I would say it has been a pleasure meeting you, but for all my many, many, many well-documented flaws, lying isn’t one of them.

  He was still cringing over those words and couldn’t for the life of him explain what had come over him to say them when he was always polite, even in the face of the most extreme provocation. In fact, he prided himself on his ability to remain calm and reasoned in a crisis, yet she had brought out the worst in him after less than five minutes with a few fairly inane veiled insults which were nowhere near as bad as the majority he had been subjected to since his scandal. Why did they hurt more coming from her? And instead of wasting his valuable time mulling over that futile question, he would do better to consider the wider implications of his slip, because ultimately, what use was a diplomat who could no longer be diplomatic? He should probably note that down to ruminate on later if the vixen remained lodged in his head.

  ‘In your mother’s defence, I did notice you watching her on more than one occasion when you thought nobody else was watching. Don’t you dare try to deny that.’

  Hoisted royally by his own petard, and when he had thought he was being so subtle in his frequent perusals. ‘Of course I was watching her. She was speaking. She didn’t stop speaking. It is basic good manners to look at somebody when they are speaking.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do!’ He glared down at his tormentor sat in a puddle of chalk and paper in her favoured camp beneath his giant desk. ‘And what could you possibly know about anything anyway? You are only nine.’

  ‘I will be ten next week, Uncle Piers, and as Miss Brookes quite rightly said to Grandpapa, age is but a number.’ His precocious eldest niece regarded him with patronising pity. ‘Even at nine I know that the right thing to do is to go and apologise to her for being so boorish. That is also basic good manners. That you haven’t, when she has been here for two hours already, smacks of cowardice.’

  ‘I have important work to do this morning.’ None of which he had so much as glanced at.

  ‘So I can see…coward.’

  ‘Brat.’

  The sharp, unexpected knock at the door
in the midst of such an awkward conversation caused him to guiltily jump out of his skin so his hastily barked come in came out a tad high-pitched. To his complete horror, when the door slowly swung open, it framed a rather wary but gorgeous-looking Miss Brookes dressed in a paint-splattered smock, which caused him to almost trip over his big feet in his hurry to stand up.

  ‘I am sorry to disturb you, Lord Eastwood, especially after I gave you my solemn pledge never to darken your door but…’ She edged in and closed the door quietly behind her then stood as prim as a nun on the threshold. ‘I felt I owed you an apology for yesterday.’

  ‘You…er…’ Thanks to his now strangled blasted vocal cords, he was still speaking in a tone several octaves higher than any man worth his salt should speak in, so tried to cover it with a cough before he tried again. Thankfully that seemed to do the trick even if it did make him look like a crusty old schoolmaster. ‘You do?’

  ‘I was impolite and confrontational when neither were deserved.’ She stared down at her elegant hands which were clasped tightly in front of her. ‘As a guest in your home, I had no right to cast aspersions on your character, nor to talk to you with such a disregard for both your status or your feelings. I wholeheartedly apologise.’

  At a loss for words, he could feel himself blinking. If she had come in and performed a fan dance on the Persian he couldn’t have been more surprised and if his niece hadn’t punched him hard on the foot to galvanise him into action, he likely would have done nothing but blink for hours. ‘Er…your apology is accepted.’

  Miss Brookes’s delicate shoulders slumped in relief. ‘Thank you… You are too kind, my lord. I barely slept a wink last night recalling all the awful things I said—all quite unprovoked. My father was furious and rightly so.’ She had been sent here then, which rather diminished it. ‘But thank you for listening to my apology and for being so gracious in accepting it.’ She turned to leave just as Isobel tugged hard on his coat-tails, then thrust a piece of paper out of her hiding place which only he could see into.