Mercer glanced each way as if he thought anyone might be listening, then lowered his head and his voice. “I could request that Captain Ruggins do the same.”
Rob crossed his arms over his chest. “Out with it, Mercer. For all your posturing, you know that Captain Ruggins is a smuggler too.”
“I would not claim so, my lord,” Mercer rushed to assure him. The sweat dotting his brow called him liar. “But there is a slight possibility. Many a sailor along this coast has been tempted.”
Rob eyed him. “What did he promise if you secured the concession?”
Mercer snatched the last page off the desk. “Nothing of any import. A gentleman’s agreement only. And it matters not, as it appears I was too late. Now, I must be going, so I can return to London and file these papers.”
Rob nodded, and his man of affairs scurried from the room as if the Lord of the Smugglers were on his tail.
Which, perhaps, he was.
Rob rose to go find his sister. Bascom, on duty by the front door, pointed him to the withdrawing room Rob’s mother had favored.
“She is entertaining, my lord,” he explained. “Mr. Donner called.”
“Did he?” The words must have come out more growl than he intended, for the footman blanched.
Rob took the stairs two at a time and plowed into the withdrawing room just as Donner reached for his sister’s hand. The fellow yanked back his fingers as if he’d been burned.
“Rob,” Elizabeth greeted him. “You remember Mr. Donner.”
“Donner, Donner,” Rob mused, moving to stand in front of them. “It’s been so long. Have we met recently?”
Donner had the good sense to color. “Forgive me, my lord. I was detained.”
Elizabeth glanced between them. “I don’t understand. Were you expecting Mr. Donner to call, Rob?”
“Frequently,” Rob said. “On your feet, sir. I have words for you.”
“Rob, no!” Elizabeth surged up in a rustle of lavender muslin as her would-be beau stood as well. “He’s done nothing wrong.”
“We’ll see about that,” Rob said. “My study, sir. Now.”
He turned and stalked from the room.
Donner must have followed, for he was on Rob’s heels as Rob pushed open the door to the study and motioned him inside.
“Nicely done,” Donner said as he closed the door behind him. “You sound exactly like an over-protective brother.”
“Because I am an over-protective brother,” Rob informed him. “I told you to leave my sister out of this, yet you persist in furthering the tale of your interest in her.”
Donner shook his head. “Your sister cares nothing for me. I know how these flirtations go. I’m merely someone to enliven her time in rustication.”
The truth bit hard. He’d used Hester in just such a way. But his sister was someone else entirely.
“You’re wrong,” Rob told him. “If my sister shows interest in you, it is because she is interested in you. We neither of us have ever considered station more important than character and commitment.”
He paled. “I see. Then I apologize, my lord. I would never want to see your sister hurt.”
“On that we agree. So I will ask your intentions.”
He reared back. “My intentions? You’d allow me to have intentions?”
Rob rolled his eyes. “My opinion on the matter has no bearing whatsoever. It is what Elizabeth wants that counts. If my sister would welcome a courtship, would you be willing to entertain one?”
“No, certainly not. But she wouldn’t, she couldn’t. I’m not worthy of her.”
“It seems we agree on that as well.”
When Donner dropped his gaze and shuffled his feet, Rob sighed. “Oh, sit down, man. I need your attention on a matter of more interest to the War Office.”
His head snapped up. “The Lord of the Smugglers has approached you.”
“Two possible Lord of the Smugglers have approached me,” Rob informed him, going for his desk. “Even though I have been assured the fellow was captured months ago.”
“You speak of Henry Bascom,” Donner said, taking the seat opposite him. “Some here considered him the Lord of the Smugglers, but we in the War Office quickly determined he wasn’t our man.”
“How?” Rob demanded, leaning both hands on the desk.
Donner’s smile was smug. “Information continued to flow, all attributed to this puffed up brigand.”
“Could someone else have assumed his mantle?” Rob asked.
“Possibly. Regardless, the fellow is not to be trusted.”
“Then we need to determine which one is our man,” Rob said.
Donner nodded. “I’ll alert the War Office, see if any new information has come to light. In the meantime, keep your eyes open, my lord. Together, we will catch the villain in the act.”
Chapter Twelve
Hester wasn’t certain how she’d function until Saturday, so great was her anticipation at meeting Rob. At least teaching on Friday kept her mind occupied. She and Mrs. Mance organized a spelling competition that had the children shouting out answers for a chance to be named the winner. A few people in the village had complained to the rector that the children didn’t need to know how to write, but she and Rosemary had agreed that reading, and writing, were important, whatever occupation a person might someday practice.
Saturday at half-past eleven, she was waiting on the coast path, perched on her sidesaddle atop a bay mare she had borrowed from the Upper Grace livery stable, sharp, briny breeze tugging at her navy riding skirts. She hadn’t wanted to lie to her mother again, so she’d confided she was going riding with Rob. Her mother had been elated.
“Borrow your sister’s hat,” she’d advised. “The tall-crowned one wrapped in tulle with the crimson band.”
“That hat is probably sitting somewhere in Castle How,” Hester had reminded her, “if Rosemary didn’t take it on her honeymoon. I’m just thankful my riding habit still fits. It’s been a long time since I rode for sport.”
Her mother had been teary-eyed once more as Hester had left. Why had she allowed the dear lady to get her hopes up? It was just a ride.
Yet it felt like so much more.
She shook her head. It might be just the two of them, but it was hardly intimate. They were out of doors, along a path frequented by farmers. And this heavy-boned mare with her long legs could probably outrun anything he had brought with him from London, so she could escape whenever she liked.
Still, all at once, it was seven years ago, and she was waiting for him to come to her across the Downs.
When he appeared, her heart soared.
He too had forsaken a hat, so that the breeze brushed his tawny hair back from his face. His crimson riding coat was tailored to give those broad shoulders room to move, and the chamois breeches hugged his legs. Her pulse was pounding faster than his horse’s hooves as he drew near and reined in.
“Good day, Hester,” he called, smile warmer than the simple words warranted. “Fine day for a ride.”
“At the moment,” she allowed. She tipped her chin down the Channel, toward where the Isle of Portland could be seen jutting out into the blue-grey waters. “But see those clouds to the west? We’ll have rain by tonight.”
“Then we should enjoy ourselves while we can,” he said. “Which way would you care to go?”
West took them entirely too close to home. “East,” she said, and they set off at a walk across the browning grasses. A tree here and there reveled in its autumn color, saffron and russet. Sheep with black faces glanced up to watch them pass.
“Quiet out here,” he ventured as they crossed the field.
“Now,” she acknowledged. “But you should have seen the area a few weeks ago when the farmers were trying to get in the hay before the rains came. Some of my older students had to stay home and either help or watch younger ones so both parents could work.”
“And now these fields are my responsibility,” he mused, gaze g
oing off across the Downs. “I didn’t think about it when Father was alive: all our properties, all our tenants. Mercer, our steward, tells me we have more than two hundred people depending on us, and that doesn’t count their children. As viscount, I must see to their wellbeing.”
Hester raised her brows. “No one man can care for more than two hundred people.”
By the way his shoulders slumped, he had been trying to do just that. “I have a team of men at each location and Mercer to oversee them. But he still brings all decisions to me. I find it a remarkably heavy burden.”
She didn’t need Rosemary’s lorgnette to see that. Even his eyes sagged with the weight of it. “What will you do?”
His smile was sad. “What can I do? I am the viscount. I must rise to the occasion. There is no one else.”
She reached across the distance and brushed his shoulder with her hand. “You have always been clever. You’ll find a way. It might not be the way of your father or brother, but it will suffice.”
He nodded, then straightened, and her hand fell back.
“Enough of the maudlin,” he declared. “See that tree up ahead?”
Hester followed his gaze to the wide-spreading branches of an oak, the leaves crimson now with autumn. “Yes. What about it?”
“How fast can we reach it?”
“How fast?” Hester asked, fingers tightening on the reins. “Do you mean to race?”
The charming smile she remembered popped into view. “Of course. The first one to pass the tree wins a kiss.”
Heat thrummed through her veins. She should refuse. She must refuse.
She didn’t want to refuse.
“From whomever she chooses,” she amended. “You’re on.” She clapped her heel against the bay’s side, and the mare leaped forward. Over the thundering hooves, she thought she heard Rob’s cry.
She bent forward, urged the mare faster. The wind stung her cheeks, pulled her hair from her pins to send it streaming away from her face. The thunder grew louder as Rob’s horse pounded closer.
“Come on, girl,” she urged. “Just a little farther.”
She passed the tree in a flash, then slowed her mount to circle back.
Rob was waiting for her, smile proud.
“You won,” he said. “I am ready to surrender my kiss.”
That look declared as much. His gaze roamed over her face to fix upon her lips.
“I said the lady may choose whom she kisses,” she reminded him, giving her mount a pat and willing her heart to cease its frantic beat. “What if I were to choose Rebecca?”
He crumpled over his saddle. “Rebecca! Ah, to have come so close to perfection and fallen short.”
Hester laughed. “You were the one to suggest a race.”
He straightened and edged his mount closer. “But you decided the true winner. Can I say nothing to convince you to change your mind? Kissing me might be more invigorating than kissing your daughter.”
She remembered. She was leaning toward him before she thought better of it.
He met her halfway. His lips brushed hers, soft and gentle. His sigh tingled against her mouth. Oh, the delight, the joy, the wonder.
Her mare was wiser than she was, for the horse moved away from Rob’s, breaking the kiss. Hester gathered her dignity with the reins. “It seems we are not above old habits.”
“You are far more than an old habit,” he murmured, gaze caressing her face. “You are the very air I breathe.”
So easy to fall into that gaze, into those arms.
“Those are not the words of a friend, sir,” she said primly.
“Perhaps not,” he allowed. “Perhaps I want more.”
Her pulse would not be still. But if he could issue a challenge, so could she.
“What more can there be between a viscount and a widow teaching at a dame school?” she demanded.
“That,” he said, “is entirely up to you.”
Was it? So little in her life had seemed her choice. She had not chosen to move to Upper Grace on her father’s death. She had not chosen for Rob to leave her behind. She had agreed to marry Jasper, but she certainly hadn’t chosen to be left a widow. Even her teaching job was only because Rosemary had been deemed unsuitable.
“I think it is something the two of us must decide,” she countered. “For a lady like myself, when it comes to a gentleman, there is friendship, and there is courtship. If you will not have the one, are you willing to consider the other? Only you can answer that, Rob.”
He was silent, gazing at her with that yearning in his eyes, and all of her cried out. She hadn’t been good enough for him then. It seemed she wasn’t good enough for him now. Why had she thought things might be different between them?
Once more, she clapped her heel to her mount and fled, but this time she left him behind.
~~~
He wasn’t as clever as she’d named him, for all Rob could do was sit in the saddle and stare as Hester’s horse carried her away from him. Her question had caught him off guard. He’d been too stunned to think.
He could pursue her, but he hadn’t been able to catch her the first time they’d raced a few minutes ago. He doubted he could catch her the second. And, if he did manage to catch her, what would he say to her?
Was he willing to court her, to marry her, to be a husband and father?
He certainly wasn’t making a very good viscount. He’d eagerly agreed to this meeting when he was to weigh all decisions. He must protect his holdings, his tenants and staff, and his family.
He also had to secure his line.
There was that. The Peverell lineage had gone from having an heir and a spare, as some called it, to Rob being the last. No distant cousin waited in the wings, to his knowledge. Perhaps the College of Heralds might be able to scare one up, but where did that leave Elizabeth?
So, wasn’t it his duty to marry?
The rain she’d predicted pattered across the ground, pebbling him with ice. Humbled and thoughtful, he turned his mount for home.
Elizabeth spotted him from the withdrawing room as he was heading for his bedchamber.
“I won’t ask you how your ride went,” she said, raising a brow. “It’s written all over your face.”
“Then perhaps I should wash my face,” he grumbled, turning to go change out of his sodden riding clothes.
“Perhaps you should,” she called after him. “And when you’re done, join me in the library. We must talk.”
Rob paused and glanced back. “Everything all right?”
“Most assuredly not when my brother’s countenance is stormier than the autumn skies. I’ll be waiting for the full story.” She wiggled her brows as if she expected high entertainment.
She was doomed to disappointment.
He allowed Eckman, his valet, to take his time changing him into fresh breeches and coat. Delaying tactics. What was he to say to his sister? From the moment Hester had bumped into him at the Harvest Ball, Elizabeth had been pushing him toward her. She’d claimed to have seen something between him and Hester. She’d be saddened to find it might be too little, too late.
His sister was standing with a book in her hand as he entered the room. An ancestor had included a library in their summer retreat, and another had stocked it with a few weighty tomes like the nineteen-volume Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and Colquhoun’s various treatises on social ills in London, as if trying to impress upon any visitors the serious nature of the house’s inhabitants.
It didn’t help that the room was paneled in dark wood, with a single narrow window high in one wall and a black carpet with bronze-colored chess pieces emblazoned on it covering most of the polished wood floor. His father and mother, bless them, had added novels, poetry, and plays and brought in plenty of brass lamps. He’d often found Elizabeth curled up in one of the leather-bound armchairs, lost in a story, when she was younger.
And promptly chivied her out the door into the sunshine.
“Wordsworth?” he
asked as he came into the room now.
“Blake,” she said, lowering the book. “You look better. Was that sufficient time to reconsider your misbehavior?”
“How do you know I misbehaved?” he argued, going to sit on one of the other chairs.
Elizabeth collapsed onto the one nearest her, grey skirts puddling on the thick carpet. “Because you always misbehave. And I doubt Hester has it in her.”
“You’d be wrong there,” he said, leaning back and studying the scene on the curved ceiling. Plump peasants merrily stomped grapes under a heavy sky while tables groaned with crusty loaves and clay jars brimming with olives. Now, wouldn’t that be a fine place to learn to be the head of the family?
“Really?” Elizabeth pressed. “She seems quite proper.”
Rob dropped his gaze to his sister to find her eyeing him again. “She is a lady through and through. But she didn’t seem so wedded to the rules once.”
The word wedded only served to remind him of their discussion. He found himself on his feet and moving about the room, which seemed somehow smaller and tighter than he remembered, as if the dark wood was closing in on him.
“And what rules is she determined that you follow now?” Elizabeth asked, turning her head as he passed her.
Rob clasped his hands behind his back. “I may have expressed my admiration for her too fervently, for she challenged me to prove it.”
“Slaying a dragon?” Elizabeth suggested. “Finding the fabled lost treasures of the East?”
“Nothing so fantastical.” Rob stopped and faced his sister fully. “She asked for courtship and commitment.”
Elizabeth leaned back. “Well. I like her even more now.”
Rob chuckled as he came back to his seat. “So do I. But can she be happy here?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “You know very well I have not always been happy here. And it isn’t the Lodge that concerns you. It’s London, the Season. Society.”
He nodded. “All expectations for a viscountess.”
“All expectations of a viscount,” she told him. “You recall the years that Mother refused to go up for the Season, particularly when you and I were younger.”
“I remember.”
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