Wyndcross (The Families 0f Dorset Book 1)

by Martha Keyes

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Henry in something near a sigh.

  Sir Lewis considered Henry. “I confess,” he said, “that I have been hoping for an opportunity to further my acquaintance with Miss Matcham. How fortunate that she should be here.”

  Henry snorted, plopping down in a wingback chair. “Fortunate? I should rather think not.”

  A smile broke over Sir Lewis's face. “Shall I take her off your hands?”

  Henry sat up straight, looking at Sir Lewis with a painfully hopeful stare. “I say, I’d be devilish glad if you would!” As if to incentivize Sir Lewis further, he added, “You know, she’s to inherit a whopper of a fortune.”

  Sir Lewis's half-smile reappeared. “Is that so?” He reflected a moment. “Ah, yes, I believe I did hear something along those lines.”

  Henry suggested that they might arrange it so that he could speak alone with Miss Matcham. Sir Lewis had no objection at all to the plan, and the two of them left the library on the best of terms, Henry feeling that the stars had finally smiled upon him.

  * * *

  In the morning room, Kate had been unable to string together a coherent response to Clara’s constant chatter about the fashions she was reviewing. Thankfully, Clara seemed not to require any response. Nor did she look up to see the haunted and anxious expression worn by her friend. When the door opened, Kate jumped slightly.

  Henry walked in, followed by Sir Lewis, and Kate froze in her chair as Henry performed an introduction between Sir Lewis and his sister.

  Turning toward Kate, Henry glanced at Sir Lewis with a devious grin. “You two need no introduction, do you?” Henry shot an enigmatic brow raise at Kate. “What do you say we venture outside for a short walk? I need to talk to you, Clara.” He pulled Clara up from her seat, leaving Kate to the care of Sir Lewis.

  Without precisely being able to say how it happened, Henry and Clara far outpaced them in the gardens, leaving Kate very much alone with Sir Lewis and required to lean on him much more than she liked.

  Once the Crofte siblings had disappeared from view, Sir Lewis turned toward Kate.

  Kate looked up ahead at the corner Clara and Henry had just turned and said, “Oh dear, I believe we have lost them! Shall we increase our pace a bit?”

  She made a move to continue forward but was detained by Sir Lewis’s hand grasping her arm. She looked at him, fear and anger warring in her eyes. The protection she had felt speaking with him at the Levenworth ball was palpably absent in the solitude of the garden and its high hedges.

  “My dear Kate,” he said in a voice that raised the hair on her neck. “I must speak with you alone.”

  “I can’t think,” she said, striving for a light tone as she removed his hand from her arm, “what you could possibly have to say to me in private.”

  “Can you not?” He took both her hands in his grip, pulling her towards him. “Allow me to enlighten you.”

  Stunned, she pushed off him using her elbows, but her hands remained tightly in his grasp.

  “Spare me,” she said with an angry glint in her eyes. “I’ve no desire or intention to become your mistress. Some other lady will have to claim that very questionable pleasure.”

  “Mistress?” He dropped her hands and stared at her with an unreadable expression for a moment. His mouth curled into the arrogant smile which was so unique to him. “I desire us to wed.”

  It was Kate’s turn to stare. Had she really misunderstood his intentions toward her? Had she done him a disservice in believing his character to be so black?

  She thought back to the Levenworth ball, to the way Sir Lewis had looked at her, to his words. Had he not told her that she couldn’t choose what terms she accepted a man on? That she would have all she could want under his protection? She had been sure at the time that, had they not been in public, he would have attempted to coerce her.

  She looked into his eyes and saw, to her surprise, suspense. But it was not the suspense bred of the uncertainty and excruciating hope worn by lovers. It was a fearful suspense.

  What could have changed his attitude toward her from the possessive and aggressive callousness of their last encounter to the anxious intensity of today?

  She smiled wryly as it all began to make sense. “Who told you?”

  “Told me what?” Sir Lewis said, a wary expression flashing across his face.

  “About the inheritance.” Her fear began to dissipate as a sense of control coursed through her.

  He paused before speaking.

  The pause was all the proof she needed that he did indeed know. She toyed with the idea of refusing him without telling him that there was no such inheritance to be had; to send him away having failed at his goal, believing that thousands of pounds had slipped through his fingers. She longed to tell him what she thought of him, to tear his character to shreds without giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he was not losing what he wanted.

  But in the seclusion of the garden, she knew that to do it would be to court danger. She didn’t know how far he would go to pursue the large fortune he believed her to be inheriting, and she didn’t intend to put him to the test.

  “I think I can guess how you heard,” she said. “I only hope you didn’t come all this way based on an ill-founded piece of gossip.”

  His eyes narrowed, his grip on her hands tightening uncomfortably. For a moment she caught a glimpse of the demon she might unleash if she let him believe he was losing an heiress.

  “I’m afraid,” she said, tugging a hand free, “you’ve been misinformed. I am still, as I always have been, a woman with no prospects or fortune.”

  He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and stared at her with the confident sneer she so despised. “You lie,” he said.

  She raised her brows, and a smile played at her lips. “Your accusation is offensive, but I suppose it is understandable given the disappointment I am handing you.” She looked him in his cold eyes. “I am not lying to you, Sir Lewis. I have no fortune and no prospect of inheriting one. I myself discovered the state of things only this morning. It was only ever a far-fetched chance.”

  He swallowed but looked at her through squinted eyes as if he still doubted that she was telling the truth.

  She sighed impatiently. “Do you always disbelieve someone when they claim to be fortuneless?” She couldn’t help herself, and added as an afterthought, “I admit myself slightly bewildered that you could have expected success in this mission. I believe I have frequently made plain my distaste for your company.”

  “If what you say is true,” he said, “why, then, have I had the information from multiple parties, of which one was your own aunt?”

  Kate smiled drolly at his unwillingness to believe her.

  “My aunt, bless her kind heart, was too ecstatic on discovering that the inheritance was a possibility to reign in her emotions and, very much against my wishes, let the news slip to Charlotte Thorpe. Knowing Charlotte Thorpe as you do, I imagine you can guess how news traveled from there. But that really is immaterial. Of all the people you might hear such news from, should my own word not carry the most weight?”

  He stared at her, chewing his lip.

  “Rest assured,” she said, unable to resist driving the point home, “that, even were I to inherit a fortune, your suit would not have been successful.”

  His brow began to blacken, and she hurried to add in a cheerful voice, “But no matter. Now you have the truth, and there is no harm done. How fortunate for you that I did not accept your proposal, is it not?” She shot him a knowing smile.

  Amused at his reaction to her revelation and giddy with the feeling that she had finally put Sir Lewis in his place, she recognized her opportunity to make an escape. She gripped her lips together in a last glance at him, claimed to hear Clara calling out to her, and discreetly made her way, limping slightly, out of the garden.

  Her smile faded once she left his view. The knowledge that an inheritance had changed her prospects
with Sir Lewis from mistress to wife was unsurprising yet maddening. It was not that she wished to be his wife. But it underscored to her the gulf that stood between her and anyone she should wish to marry.

  It was nothing personal nor anything within her control. People seemed to like her quite well. She had never wanted for partners in conversation. And yet that was poor consolation. What good was a pleasing disposition if it was not accompanied by a tolerable marriage settlement or a strong family name? Disposition seemed to matter the least where marriage was concerned. Money or a good family name could overcome all manner of ills, and a combination of the two more still.

  Simon, though, would marry her despite her undesirable family connections and her lack of fortune. Wasn’t that preferable to the life of a spinster?

  18

  Henry pulled Clara along by the arm out of garden path lined with freshly trimmed boxwood hedges. She was as bullheaded as their mother sometimes.

  “But she didn’t seem to want to be left alone with him, Henry.” She tugged against his grip. “And I can’t say I blame her. Something about him is so sinister.”

  Henry guffawed as he opened the front door, pulling her into the entry hall. “The ideas you ladies get from your novels!”

  “Henry.”

  His mother stood at the top of the stairway. He swallowed uncomfortably and let Clara’s arm drop. If his mother knew he had tried to pawn Miss Matcham off to Sir Lewis, there would be hell to pay.

  He looked up at her with the innocent expression he’d worked to perfect anytime he felt a lecture coming on.

  “Clara, this concerns you as well,” Lady Crofte said, descending the stairs. “Please join me in the parlor.”

  Henry looked at Clara, but she only shrugged and followed her mother down the hallway.

  Lady Crofte stood at the door, closing it behind Henry and Clara and then clasping her hands.

  “We have been harboring a deceiver in our midst.” She looked back and forth between him and Clara.

  Henry swallowed again. How in the world had the woman discovered his exploits? He leaned back on the wall behind him, crossing one leg over the other and hoping that the relaxed posture would somehow calm his nerves.

  “Mercifully,” Lady Crofte continued, “I discovered the deception this morning, and we can take action to avoid what might have been disastrous consequences.”

  If the woman thought that preventing him from fulfilling his commitment to Emmerson would avoid disastrous consequences, she was in for a nasty surprise. Unless his mother wished to find that he had been brutally murdered, Henry had no choice but to finish what he had started.

  “Henry,” she said.

  He chewed the inside of his lip and twirled his quizzing between his fingers. His throat felt peculiarly dry.

  “On no account must you fall in love with Miss Matcham. On no account must you raise any hopes in her treacherous heart.”

  The quizzing glass dropped to the rug beneath him, and he rushed to pick it up. “Come again?”

  “Miss Matcham is not, as we were so falsely given to understand, the heir to her stepfather’s fortune.” Lady Crofte looked at Henry and then at Clara.

  Gad, she was always composed. Only her flared nostrils betrayed her anger.

  “She has no inheritance to speak of,” Lady Crofte continued. “None whatsoever.” She paused. “I had great hopes for her visit here. With a match you and her, Henry, and one between Clara and Lord Ashworth, our family was to rise above the adversity which surrounds us. Those unions would take us to new heights.” She looked pointedly at Henry. “Henry will now have to look elsewhere for redemption. Our hope lies with you, Clara”

  Henry thought of his plan and how close that redemption was. He could almost taste it. It was a great relief that he wouldn’t have to tell his mother that he didn’t wish to marry Kate. He couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for Kate, though—he wouldn’t wish upon anyone the position of being the object of his mother’s wrath.

  Whatever weight was removed from his shoulders on hearing his mother’s words, a look at Clara told him that it had settled squarely on her.

  “What if neither union is necessary?”

  He regretted the words immediately. There was good reason he never risked his skin for others. The gaze directed at him by his mother was enough to make a braver man than Henry cower. He glanced at Clara. She was looking at him with an expression he had trouble identifying for a moment, so unfamiliar was it: admiration.

  “I only mean,” he said, encouraged by Clara’s expression, “that I am devilish close to solving our financial difficulties. So, you see, there’s no need for Clara or me to marry money.” He shrugged.

  One of his mother’s thin brows were raised. He felt the need to drive home his point. “What’s more, I don’t think Ash has any plans to marry Clara.”

  “What do you mean?” Clara asked. “Why do you say that?”

  He saw both sets of female eyes boring into his soul and became defensive. But he wasn’t blind, even if they were. “It’s plain as a pikestaff that he’s head over heels for Kate.”

  Clara’s eyes went wide and round. Lady Crofte’s thin nostrils flared.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Feeling he had hit a mark with his words, Henry walked over to the decanter of brandy on the side table and poured a glass.

  “Impossible,” Clara said.

  “What,” Henry said, “that a chap should prefer someone to you? A little humble pie will do you good, Clara.” He tossed off his brandy.

  Lady Crofte exhaled calmly. “Surely, if that is the impression you’ve had, it is only because Lord Ashworth mistakenly believes the same thing we did: that Miss Matcham will soon be possessed of a large inheritance. That error is easily rectified.”

  “Not by me it ain’t!” Henry said, shaking his head. He had no desire to meddle in his friend’s affairs nor to be a talebearer.

  Clara stared at him. “Even if he is in love with her, which I very much doubt—” she sent Henry a skeptical glance— “Kate’s as good as engaged to that Simon Hartley man.”

  Lady Crofte paused in the act of straightening a portrait hanging on the wall. “Hartley?”

  “Yes,” said Clara. “And they’ve been corresponding, for I saw her letter to him. It was destined for Weymouth.”

  Henry snorted. Clara didn’t seem to mind talebearing.

  “So what?” Henry interjected. “Just because Kate’s not free for the taking don’t mean Ash will fall into your lap, Clara. Besides, surely she’d rather have an earl than some fellow no one has ever heard of.”

  Hadn’t Clara said she wished to marry Bradbury? Why, then, was she acting so dashed foolish about the whole Ash business? He would never understand women.

  Lady Crofte put up a hand, commanding his silence. She looked to be having some sort of epiphany.

  “How fortunate,” she whispered as if to herself. She straightened her shoulders and looked at Clara. “I am acquainted with the Hartleys. I believe the gentleman you refer to, Clara, is a nephew. He comes to care for Agatha from time to time.” She seemed to be talking herself through things, taking slow steps as she spoke. “It is unusual to send an invitation so late, but Agatha won’t regard it. We will send her an invitation for the dinner party, addressed to her, her son, and her nephew. If Miss Matcham has an understanding with the nephew, it would be unkind in us not to invite him.”

  Henry snorted and tried to turn it into a cough. His mother always managed to make her scheming seem like the decent thing to do.

  “And, Clara,” Lady Crofte added. “It would only be right to drop a hint of the understanding between Miss Matcham and Mr. Hartley in Lord Ashworth’s ear. I imagine you can manage that easily enough.”

  Henry shook his head. Women and their wiles.

  19

  Kate’s mind was occupied well into the following day with the same unenviable thoughts which had plagued her so much since coming to Wyndcross. At one poi
nt, she began a letter to Simon, pausing with her quill to the paper, stuck at the greeting. She vacillated between a desire to put off a decision and the urgency she felt to have her future arranged. She had received a letter from him the day before, but he had made no mention of the conversation they’d had prior to his departure for Weymouth.

  Had he changed his mind about marriage with her?

  She looked down at the paper. There was a small pool where the ink had gathered at the tip of the quill, waiting for her. She crumpled the paper in frustration and threw it to the floor, toying with a desire to smash it with her boot.

  Lindley opened the door.

  “Miss,” Lindley said, “I am told you are wanted in the stables.”

  Kate’s forehead wrinkled. “Wanted in the stables? What for?”

  “I couldn’t rightly say, Miss.”

  Kate frowned. “I shan’t attempt a ride until tomorrow, I think. Besides, I haven’t time to ride before the dinner party.” It was very unlike Lindley to suggest anything that would hurry her mistress’s toilette prior to an event such as the one taking place at Wyndcross that evening.

  “Good heavens, Miss!” Lindley laughed. “As if I should suggest a ride when we have barely any time at all before the party.”

  Kate’s lips trembled as she suppressed a smile. “Shall I take offense at the suggestion that we need all of four hours for my toilette?”

  Lindley’s eyes narrowed, and her lips tightened. “I shan’t rise to your bait, Miss.”

  Very much at a loss to understand why Lindley would send her to the stables with no explanation whatsoever, Kate made her way outside at a slow and steady pace, knowing that any carelessness could lead to the longer recovery she was all too eager to avoid.

  She met Avery on her way to the stables, leading Henry’s horse to the courtyard at a brisk pace.

  “Ah, Miss Matcham.” He gave her an enigmatic look but did not stop. “On your way to the stables, I reckon? She’s waiting for you.”