Harlequin Historical February 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Virginia Heath

  In garish pink chalk and a large font were written two words in capital letters.

  APOLOGISE BACK!!!

  Then her small fist punched him in the shin for good measure in case he was too dim-witted to take heed.

  ‘I should…um…’ Another, quite unnecessary punch landed just below his right knee. ‘I should probably apologise in return, Miss Brookes.’ He sidestepped his niece’s small fist this time and attempted a smile the moment his vivacious visitor turned back. A smile which he feared resembled more of a grimace. ‘For I too was rude and confrontational. I am not normally so quick to temper.’ He usually avoided confrontation and swallowed his anger, a tactic which he had used ineffectually throughout his turbulent marriage and which never failed to give him indigestion later in the day, but which had uncharacteristically deserted him when faced with Miss Brookes.

  She beamed at him and it did odd things to his insides. ‘Hardly a surprise when my Papa says I would try the patience of a saint. He is quite correct—I am too outspoken, my lord, and need to learn when to keep my own counsel. It is apparently my worst character flaw.’

  ‘And according to my mother, I am infuriatingly tight-lipped about everything. That is mine.’

  She smiled again and he found himself smiling inanely back, until he saw another chalk-written placard waving frantically out of the hidden confines of Camp Isobel.

  Pay her a compliment—idiot!

  ‘That is a very nice…um…smock you are wearing, Miss Brookes.’

  A sentence so terrible, he wished he could claw the wretched thing back the second it escaped. He was going to strangle his niece as soon as he had her alone, and then he was going to have some stern words with himself for blithely following the advice of a tyrannical almost-ten-year-old. Because surely stuttering and looking like a fool was better than blurting out blithering idiocy and confirming it for certain.

  She clearly thought the same as it was now her turn to blink back at him in outright disbelief. Before he could fill the dreadful silence, things got much worse because beneath the desk his niece slapped her forehead then groaned aloud at his total ineptitude.

  ‘Is somebody under your desk, Lord Eastwood?’

  Before he could stop her, Miss Brookes had darted around to see for herself and he watched in mortification as her lovely eyes took in the now cheerfully waving Isobel, who was still grasping her damning chalk instruction to pay a compliment while the other, the one instructing him to apologise back in capitals, complete with its triple exclamation marks, lay face up on the floor.

  There wasn’t a chance in hell the vixen hadn’t seen it, but in case she hadn’t and while he powerlessly felt the tips of his ears glow crimson, Isobel snatched it up and tossed it behind her before she scrambled out of her den and curtsied.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Brookes. You look very pretty this morning.’ The traitor shot him a smug that is how you pay a compliment look. ‘I love how you have arranged your hair. I wish I had natural curls like yours. Hasn’t she got lovely hair, Uncle Piers?’

  She did, it was quite beautiful, but there was not a chance he could admit as much now without blushing all over like a beetroot when already his ears were on fire. ‘Have you met my precocious niece Isobel?’

  ‘Good morning, Miss Isobel…’ Those not quite blue, not quite violet eyes slanted to his in amusement. ‘I most certainly did not expect to see you under your uncle’s desk this morning.’

  ‘It has only been his desk for two years, Miss Brookes, it has been my camp for seven, so technically we have agreed to share it.’

  ‘By technically, Miss Brookes, my niece means she refuses to leave despite numerous evictions and for the sake of peace we have agreed I will ignore her as long as she remains silent. Sadly, we are still trying to establish exactly what silence means because the difference between Isobel’s definition and mine leaves a lot to be desired.’

  ‘No order and quiet for you then, Lord Eastwood?’ Amusement danced in her beguiling violet eyes as she quoted his harsh words from yesterday back. ‘Even though you require plenty of both for your exceedingly important work?’

  ‘Are you listening to this, Isobel?’ Piers took the playful barb in the spirit it was intended, supremely grateful she hadn’t mentioned the chalk placards or his obviously glowing ears. ‘Miss Brookes has been here for less than a minute and already she has acknowledged that I am much too important to be inconvenienced by your continued and unwelcome presence in my study.’

  ‘Miss Brookes most certainly did not say that, Uncle Piers, did you, Miss Brookes?’

  ‘I most certainly did not, Miss Isobel, as I had absolutely no intention of taking sides in this private family dispute.’ Her lovely gaze held his as she feigned annoyance for his niece’s benefit. ‘However, I’ve a good mind to ally myself with Miss Isobel on principle now that I have been so shamelessly misquoted, my lord.’

  His niece beamed up at her angelically, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. ‘Seeing as you are now on my side, Miss Brookes, then perhaps you can intercede? As I fail to see why I should be the one to relinquish my claim upon the desk, when I was plainly here first.’

  ‘Even though it was technically my desk before it was your desk, brat?’

  Miss Brookes winked at Isobel. ‘In my family, any sentence which includes the word technically is considered fundamentally problematic, my lord, as it wouldn’t stand up in court.’

  Piers found himself smiling. ‘Then here is a fact which is fundamentally unproblematic and which no judge or magistrate could possibly argue. Seeing as you live next door, Isobel, you technically have no legal claim to any of the furniture in this house.’

  ‘Miss Isobel lives next door?’ This news seemed to surprise Miss Brookes and charm her in equal measure. ‘It’s so lovely that your sister purchased a house so near just to be close to your parents.’

  ‘It was worse than that I’m afraid. Much to my father’s consternation, my sister fell in love with our neighbour and within two mere months of clandestine courtship, upped and married him, so we have never properly got rid of her. Although both she and my vile niece are here so much, I constantly wonder why they haven’t yet demolished the wall between us to make my misery complete.’

  ‘That’s even lovelier… Romantic even.’ She made an odd face as if the word romantic surprised her. ‘If you like such things.’

  ‘But so very inconvenient for those of us continually invaded.’

  ‘Grandmama and Grandpapa do not feel invaded—nor have they ever minded me using this desk, so there!’ Keen to prove she held the moral high ground, Isobel crawled back under the desk and decisively selected a new stick of chalk to resume her drawing. ‘Besides, you abandoned it to go and live in Portugal, Uncle Piers, and so any prior legal claim you might have had to it is now null and void too.’

  Miss Brookes’s copper head tilted in curiosity and he decided there and then he was going to strangle his talkative niece. Any mention of his past invariably led to things best left there. ‘How long did you live in Portugal for, Lord Eastwood?’

  As long as it took Constança to tire of him and replace him with a more exciting man. ‘Three years. I worked with the British Ambassador there ensuring our Portuguese trade routes remained open.’ Why did he always feel compelled to justify his work with the dullest possible examples? Yesterday, he had blathered on about feeding soldiers and now he was boring her with shipping lanes. She would think he was just a delivery boy or a pen pusher, when the truth was the government employed him for his mind, his unique talent with languages and his unflinching ability to think logically in the most fraught and challenging circumstances.

  Not that he would mention any of those things because they smacked of bragging, and bragging was another thing his annoyingly noble character did not do. ‘I returned two years ago. Before Portugal I was stationed at the consulate i
n Tripoli.’ Where he had also been involved in all manner of exciting and unpredictable things. None of which he felt comfortable discussing.

  ‘But still, for three whole years you were not safely here at home while the war raged across the Peninsula directly around you. That must have been difficult.’ Miss Brookes clearly read more than just the gossip columns.

  ‘I haven’t spent the entire war in my armchair, Miss Brookes.’ There had been times when there had been no sign of any chairs at all, or even walls for that matter, after the returning French cannons had worked their magic. Those had certainly been a trying few weeks until the British retook the city.

  ‘I should probably apologise for that comment too…’

  ‘No need.’ Piers smiled as he waved it away. ‘Occasionally things were difficult, I cannot deny.’ Although largely thanks more to Constança than Napoleon’s rampaging army. There was a predictability about the Emperor’s ceaseless hostilities which had been sadly lacking in his volatile wife. ‘But by the time I arrived in Portugal, Wellington had already kicked most of Boney’s army out of the region and thankfully most of the battles thereafter took place in the south and central regions, while myself and my trusty armchair were stationed predominantly in the north. In Porto to be exact—overseeing the dense concentration of British interests there.’

  Her unusual eyes held his narrowed, but plainly amused. He liked the way it made them sparkle. ‘You are never going to allow me to forget the armchair comment, are you, Lord Eastwood?’

  ‘Probably not, Miss Brookes.’

  She smiled, then rested her hip on the corner of his desk while her fingertips idly traced the shape of the heavy crystal inkwell he had inherited from his grandfather. It was an unconscious action. Informal. And he liked that too. ‘Why were the British interests concentrated in Porto when I thought Lisbon was both the capital and the country’s major shipping port?’

  ‘Because of a much more important kind of port—the drinking kind. The wine is produced in the Douro Valley and shipped here via Porto. Even during wartime, the aristocracy must have its wine, Miss Brookes. That work was crucial.’

  ‘Very important work then indeed, Lord Eastwood.’ She offered him another smile, a more awkward one this time because she had also realised she had picked up his inkwell and hastily returned it to its silver tray before she stood. ‘And on the subject of important work, we doubtless both have plenty to get on with so I shall leave you in peace—both figuratively and literally. I am glad we cleared the air, my lord.’

  ‘As am I.’

  She dipped her head to peek at his niece under his desk. ‘And thank you for your lovely compliments about my hair, Miss Isobel. It was a vast improvement on your uncle’s lacklustre praise of my tatty old painting smock—but as I insulted his trusty armchair I shall let it slide. It was lovely to meet you again.’

  ‘You too, Miss Brookes.’

  ‘Good day to you both.’ She had opened the door again before she turned around one last time, all contriteness now replaced with the bold confidence which had first called to him yesterday. ‘Your mother was right, Lord Eastwood. You are much more affable in an individual conversation. To my utmost surprise, you are almost tolerable this morning.’

  His heart seemed to swell at the compliment. ‘And you have been an unexpected pleasure yourself this morning too, Miss Brookes…good day.’

  And all at once, as far as he was concerned, it suddenly was.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  While her father continued his preliminary sketches and the workmen prepared the huge canvas in Mayfair, and her mother went for yet another costume fitting at the theatre, Faith decided to take advantage of their unusually silent house in Bloomsbury to throw herself into her own work. As much as she was tempted to use the time scouring through the old newspapers at the Minerva Lending Library to properly reread the Eastwood scandal all over again from the beginning, she flatly refused to give in to the sudden and pointless urge to do so. Especially because she only felt compelled to do it because he had made her doubt what she already knew off by heart anyway and, rampant curiosity aside, it certainly did not help her in any way.

  With less than two months till the judging, she wanted a decent selection of paintings before she chose the very best to go to the Royal Academy. This was her third attempt at getting a picture into the academy’s prestigious summer exhibition in the hope her talent would finally be seen by the public and garner her some clients of her own. It had been that same exhibition which had launched her father’s career, alongside many others including Thomas Lawrence and John Constable, although granted all three of them had also begun as students of the Academy. As a woman, Faith was denied that luxury but considered herself very lucky indeed to have had her father as her teacher. Most female artists weren’t that fortunate.

  Although that great blessing was also a bit of a curse now that she was seeking recognition, because while the Academy did not exclude women from exhibiting, most managed to get their work past the judges by presenting their painting to the panel using their initials and surname rather than their actual Christian names. But when your surname was Brookes, and the whole world and his wife knew that the great Augustus was cursed with three daughters and no sons, trying to get her gender past the other judges was impossible and some of them were dreadful sticklers. Faith consoled herself over her continued rejections with the knowledge that it had taken her brilliant father five attempts to get a painting into the illustrious exhibition, so it was unlikely she would manage one again this year, but that would not stop her trying her best. If she was ever going to crawl out of her dear Papa’s huge shadow and make a name for herself in her own right, she had to persevere. She owed it to herself to succeed.

  Faith stared at the seascape again as she mixed more linseed oil into her paint, promising herself she would not let it dry too much again with her wool-gathering, then immediately forgot that lofty promise once more to gaze off into space. She had been in an odd mood since yesterday and it was playing havoc with her concentration. She blamed Lord Eastwood entirely, because it seemed to be him who kept occupying her thoughts. She had gone to Grosvenor Square two days ago, fully expecting to meet a monster and had left yesterday not quite knowing what to think of him.

  On that first day, they had argued. With the benefit of hindsight, she realised all those harsh words were entirely down to her. At first, she did not want to acknowledge it, and only agreed to apologise to him the next morning because her livid father had forced her to. Papa had rightly pointed out she had been spoiling for a fight from the first moment she had met Lord Eastwood, and after a huge argument which thoroughly ruined dinner, when Faith was finally all alone with her thoughts and unable to sleep, she couldn’t deny that was true.

  She had dragged prejudices into the Writtles’ drawing room, assumptions which very well might be correct, but with no provocation whatsoever, she had allowed them to influence her behaviour towards him. Whatever dreadful things Lord Eastwood might have done to his wife, he certainly hadn’t done them to Faith. Therefore, her apology yesterday had been genuine, if not still a little begrudging.

  However, that brief meeting in his study had challenged all her preconceptions still further, and frustratingly left her in two minds now. Completely torn. Partly convinced he was still a monster and partly intrigued by the prospect he wasn’t. Because yesterday, he hadn’t only come across as eminently likeable, he had also left her thoroughly charmed. A state she was extremely uncomfortable with.

  But how could she not be charmed when he allowed his niece to make camp under his desk, and spoke to the child with such obvious familial affection she could not fail to like him a little bit? She knew from her own father’s excellent example in comparison with the relationships her childhood friends had had with their fathers, few men had such natural patience and rapport with a little one. Less still if the little one happened to be a
girl. Yet Lord Eastwood and the incorrigible Isobel clearly adored one another. Monsters weren’t supposed to be good with children.

  They weren’t supposed to be attractive either.

  The way her pulse had fluttered when he had first shaken her hand had been peculiar in the extreme and most unlike her, the strange way her nerves had danced each time she glanced at him, the indescribable, strange stirrings of awareness she had instantly experienced when she had had no intention of being attracted and most certainly not by him. Yet the odd effect he’d had on her had resolutely lingered through both of their brief encounters and both left her feeling thoroughly out of sorts since. None of it made sense.

  She sighed at the vexing conundrum, then groaned as she glanced at her forgotten palette and realised she had mixed so much oil with the Prussian blue that it was no longer fit for purpose.

  As she reached for a cloth to scrape it all off, she heard her sisters in the hallway and scant moments later their feet heading her way, and knew her unproductive stretch of peace and quiet was now unequivocally at an end.

  It was the youngest Brookes, Charity, who barrelled in first, closely followed by a more subdued Hope. ‘We weren’t expecting you to be home! Aren’t you supposed to be assisting Papa?’

  ‘His men are sizing the canvas today. It’s considerably bigger than we originally planned and will need longer to prepare, so I cannot lay the base coat until it dries.’ There was no rhyme or reason to the way a canvas behaved, and the larger the canvas, the more temperamental it could be. It could be a week before she could get to work on it. ‘How was Whitstable?’ The pair of them had spent the past week visiting their maternal grandparents in Kent, a regular trip Faith would have accompanied them on had it not been for the Writtle commission.