The Earl Returns

by Marek, Lillian

  It rankled even more because he knew the original failure had been his. He had wanted Merton broken down, defeated before he died. But he hadn’t broken. He had been pushed down, penned in with the scum of the earth in that ship. He should have been cringing, weeping with humiliation, not laughing. He should have been begging. That was how he should have died, broken and begging.

  The newcomer crumpled the note and threw it into the fire.

  There would be no more failures. This time, Merton would be crushed.

  Chapter Six

  The house party quickly settled into a certain routine. The gentlemen who rose early—Mr. Rollins, Mr. Saunders and Mr. Philipott—went fishing, and generally did not return until well into the afternoon. They did, however, return in good spirits and with hearty appetites for dinner. Sometimes, they even brought a few fish. Merton and Hodgson spent the day at the shipyard, returning only in time for dinner.

  Merton realized that there was little point in spending all his time at the shipyard if he wanted to observe his relations. Unfortunately, there was little he could do by way of observing them during the day. They and the other guests quickly developed their own routines.

  Edgar Wortham and his father-in-law, Mr. Browne, spent the best part of the day in bed, attempting to recover from their overindulgence the night before. Lord Carraby generally managed to find a corner in which to seclude himself, either to read the papers or—more frequently—to take a nap.

  As for the ladies, Lady Merton kept to her dressing room on the excuse that she was writing letters. In reality, she was trying to avoid her daughter-in-law, Arabella, who increasingly tried her temper. But then, Arabella tried everyone’s temper. She always had.

  Balked of access to her mother-in-law and considering herself, the daughter-in-law of an earl and mother of an almost-earl, well above Lady Barbury and Lady Carraby, the wives of viscounts, and Lady Singleton, the wife of a mere baronet, Arabella commandeered a sitting room for her own correspondence. That correspondence was small, of course, since she was generally disliked by all who knew her and few wrote to her, but the fiction of a large circle of friends demanding frequent letters was maintained.

  Lady Barbury, Lady Singleton and Lady Carraby found still another sitting room and amused themselves with gossip about various mutual acquaintances, including Mrs. Bertram Wortham and Mrs. Edgar Wortham, who were delicately dissected, with particular attention given to the total lack of substance to their pretensions.

  Pamela held court in a small, pale rose sitting room. It was a room she had decorated herself, back in the days when she thought she was the Countess of Merton, and suited her delicate looks admirably. It was filled with curving chairs upholstered in a charming cream silk embroidered with tiny roses, fragile tables bearing even more fragile porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses, and an exquisite inlaid work table that held her needlework. It had survived Merton’s renovations on his return mainly because he had not noticed that the room existed. It was to be doubted that any of those curving chairs would have survived had he chanced to sit on them.

  Pamela was currently engaged in embroidering a whitework cloth for her dressing table. It was a design of both delicacy and artistry, greatly admired by all who had the opportunity to see her at work, which was more than a few people over the years. She quite liked needlework. She considered that it provided an excellent opportunity to display her slim white hands. She rarely, however, took more than a few stitches in the course of a morning, and this particular piece had been occupying her for several years now.

  Her admiring audience today consisted of Miss Barbury and Miss Singleton, a pair of silly but essentially kindhearted girls. They were both entranced by the tale of Merton’s mysterious return—or rather by the tales, of which there were many. No one appeared to be quite sure where he had been.

  Some were positive he had been engaged in heroic derring-do, either foiling a French plot against the crown or rescuing a damsel in distress from vile usurpers in a small kingdom in Italy, or perhaps in Turkey. Others said quite the opposite, that he had been sunk in debauchery and had only returned after he had been cured of his opium addiction by Tibetan monks who had kept him in their monastery for two years before they sent him home.

  They were also entranced by the sad fate of Mrs. Wortham. Anyone could see that she would make an absolutely perfect countess. She sat there at her needlework, wearing the most adorable little lace cap on top of her pale curls, and a perfectly delectable muslin dress printed with tiny posies and trimmed with ever such delicate lace. Miss Singleton sighed in total admiration.

  Miss Barbury also sighed in admiration, but it was not quite so total. She couldn’t help but notice that Mrs. Wortham appeared to have darkened her lashes, which would no doubt have been as pale as her hair without such attention. Miss Barbury was herself possessed of long, thick, dark lashes, so she naturally noticed such things. She also noticed that Mrs. Wortham’s eyes, though blue, were on the small side and set perhaps a little too close to her nose. Miss Barbury’s eyes were large and hazel, sometimes almost green, and had often been praised. She sighed in pity for the woman who had thought she had married an earl and discovered she had only married a mister.

  “It must be difficult for you, coming here as a visitor when you used to be the lady of the house,” said Miss Barbury, voicing her thoughts a bit tactlessly.

  Mrs. Wortham jabbed the needle forcefully into the fabric, fixed the smile on her face, and looked up. “Oh, no, it is not visiting the Hall that is difficult. It is seeing Merton as he has become.” She sighed. “He was always a bit… forceful, shall we say? That is why I would not have him. My dear Edgar is far more of a gentleman. But Merton did not take it well when I made it clear that we would not suit. I fear that may have been why he ran off that way without a word to any of us. And now… well, you can see for yourself. He has grown so coarse and spends all his time with common ruffians like that Hodgson fellow, making not the slightest effort to take his place in decent society.”

  Miss Singleton blinked uncertainly. She did not quite know how to respond. Criticizing her host was something she had been taught never to do—at least in public. On the other hand, she hesitated to disagree with Mrs. Wortham, who was not only older and married but had almost been a countess. “Lord Merton is rather large,” she offered. Miss Singleton was rather small and often felt intimidated by tall men.

  There was pity in Mrs. Wortham’s smile. “Too often his behavior is as gross as his size.”

  Miss Barbury also thought that Mrs. Wortham’s confidences were perhaps not something a lady should be entrusting to comparative strangers, and endeavored to give the conversation a different direction. “My father thinks that Lord Merton is doing something admirable in starting a shipyard to give employment to sailors who have been discharged now that the war is over.”

  Mrs. Wortham gave a trill of laughter. She accomplished this much more effectively than Lady Carraby did. “Naturally, we should all do anything we can to aid the poor men who served during the war, though some of them are no better than thieves and blackguards. However, a true gentleman can hardly befriend them. Treating creatures like that Hodgson fellow as if they are entitled to sit at the same table as gently bred ladies is simply abominable. Such behavior will only give them false ideas about their place in the world. You would hardly treat your maid as if she is your bosom bow, now, would you?” She bestowed a superior smile on the young women.

  Miss Barbury could see some sense in that. Her own parents were kind to their servants and to the people of the village near their home in Somerset, but no one was ever in any doubt as to the distance between them.

  Miss Singleton thought that what Mrs. Wortham said sounded well enough. However, her own maid, Martha, had started as her nursery maid and had been with her ever since. She was made a trifle uncomfortable by the realization that she would no more dare to defy Martha than she would dare to defy her parents. But, she consoled herself, that
wasn’t the same as being Martha’s friend.

  Chapter Seven

  For much of the week, Lydia and Miranda had gone out early and spent the day exploring the grounds. More precisely, Lydia took a sketchbook, found an attractive view, and settled down to draw. Since Lydia not only enjoyed sketching far more than any other entertainment on offer at the Hall but was also very good at it, Miranda could hardly object. On the other hand, much as she might admire the finished product, she found no pleasure in sitting still to watch the process. So Miranda strode off, ever eager to see what was behind the next curve in the path or over the next rise. By the time she returned, Lydia was putting the finishing touches on her sketch and they went back to the Hall together, quite satisfied with the morning’s activities.

  Neither of them described those mornings in any detail to Lady Carraby, who would have indulged in an attack of the vapors had she realized that each girl was alone and unchaperoned for hours each day. She would have been even more distressed had she discovered that Miranda was not actually alone.

  Merton discovered that Miss Rokeby had wandered off the first morning, so he suggested a walk she might enjoy the next day. Strange to relate, he somehow found himself on that very path when she arrived. Miss Rokeby could not quite manage to be astonished by this coincidence, and was perfectly willing to take Merton’s arm as they walked.

  Indeed, she was delighted to take his arm. It was so strong, so solid. It was not often that a man made her feel delicate and fragile. Well, he did not really make her feel fragile. She never felt fragile. But he made her feel that if she did suddenly become fragile, he could take care of her. She suspected that she was thinking nonsense—clearly the result of walking beside him, holding his arm. Her thinking was all muddled. Every time she laid eyes on him, her thinking was all muddled, and it grew even more muddled when she touched him, even with a gloved hand on a woolen sleeve. Indeed, she was not really thinking at all, but this was such an unexpectedly pleasant sensation that she did not mind.

  She simply enjoyed walking beside Lord Merton and holding his arm. Even if he was an Englishman with a title.

  *

  It was not difficult for Merton to leave without anyone noticing. However, he had, at first, been afraid Miss Rokeby might object to his joining her on her walk. They were, after all, unchaperoned. But there were no protestations, no nervous flutterings, no missish nonsense, just a smile of pleasure to greet him. And she looked at him, not sideways or looking up through her lashes, just directly at him. He was sure that if she had objected to his presence, she would have told him to go away, directly and honestly. It was as if she had no notion at all of the games of flirtation, yet he could have sworn he had seen her flirting with her cousin, George, the evening before. It was not a sight he had enjoyed. He had been startled by the surge of jealousy that course through him. He knew he had no right to be jealous, but still…

  He put his hand over her hand on his arm, silently damning whoever had decreed that ladies and gentlemen must wear gloves at all times—what he would not give for the touch of skin on skin—and squeezed her hand. She looked up startled, but smiled.

  She smiled.

  His heart rose at her smile, and he smiled back. It was probably an idiotic, besotted smile, but he did not care. He was besotted, no matter he had first set eyes on her only three days before. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless. He found himself looking at a meadow and picturing her lying in the grass, looking up at him while he… he caught himself up and reminded himself that she was a gently bred lady, an innocent.

  But he couldn’t stop wanting.

  The next day, they met again, somehow by chance. They were both a bit diffident at first, but soon they began talking, easily and openly, about everything. He led her away from the gravel paths of the formal gardens and showed her the folly hidden out of sight of the house. When he was a child, it had served as a forest hut when he was Robin Hood, a castle when he was a knight of the Round Table, and a ship when he set off to explore the world. She told him of the small island in Boston’s Inner Harbor that was her desert island when she played at shipwreck, though she always beached her small skiff carefully.

  They talked about their childhoods and about their friends, about her parents and about his. Her parents had worked together to build both a family and a shipping empire. His had endeavored to outdo each other in outrageous behavior until they managed to kill themselves in a carriage accident during a race from London to Bath. It was rumored that liquor played a part in the accident. She was horrified, but he assured her that the pain it caused him was minimal, since he had rarely seen either parent. That, she said stiffly, made it even worse. He disagreed, for it had delivered him to Schotten Hall and into the hands of his grandfather, a man he loved and honored.

  On the third day, they came across an old path around some fields, a path rarely used any more now that these fields were used only for pasture. Miss Rokeby was climbing over an ancient stile when the wood gave way and the step began to tilt. She teetered for a moment, arms flailing, before she began falling backwards. He was there in an instant to catch her but was too off balance to keep his footing. Backwards he went as well, wrapping his arms around her to keep her before him so he could cushion her fall.

  They landed on the edge of the path, which was soft and grassy enough to prevent broken bones but hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Miss Rokeby was sturdy enough to knock out any breath the impact with the ground had left.

  Even as he was gasping, he realized that his protecting arms somehow ended up positioned so that her breast nestled neatly in the palm of his hand. As if in a dream, he squeezed gently, his fingers moving ever so slowly to feather over the nipple. He heard her tiny gasp, but it was a gasp of surprise, not of protest. He could feel the nipple stiffen and he grew hard himself in an instant. Did she know what it was that pressed against her bottom? He moved one of his hands down, but there were too many petticoats, too much cloth.

  He wanted—God, how he wanted. But he could not have, not yet. Soon, but not yet. She might not be one of those empty-headed, fragile, little dolls his grandmother paraded in front of him—she was far above them—but she was still an innocent, a lady, not some tavern wench. He forced himself to move his hand away.

  She made a slight sound—he thought it might be a sigh of regret—when he did so but, soon, they were both on their feet. They dusted themselves off, each assuring the other that the tumble had caused no damage, no pain. When they continued, carefully not quite looking at each other, there was a new feeling between them, a strange compound of constraint and awareness.

  How long, he wondered, did he have to wait to say something to her? Was a week’s acquaintance considered long enough? What would she say if he spoke now? Did he need to speak to her parents first? He longed to declare himself and to hear her say in return that she was his. He was not sure how long he could restrain himself.

  He knew he was neglecting the task he had set for himself. He should be keeping an eagle eye on Edgar and his mother and his wife and her father. He should be aware of everything they said or did. He should be noting every expression that crossed their faces. He knew that was what he should be doing.

  But then Miss Rokeby stole into his thoughts, and everything else vanished.

  Chapter Eight

  Lady Carraby arrived in her daughter’s room bright and early. She sat Lydia down for an examination of her wardrobe and created a list of instructions on what to wear when and with what. More important, as far as Lady Carraby was concerned, was an analysis of Lydia’s failure so far to capture the attention of the earl, and suggestions—more precisely, orders—concerning what she must do to rectify that situation. Lydia seemed to shrink as she listened to her mother, nodding dutifully and quite unable to say a word.

  Miranda was not certain if she had escaped her aunt’s attention or was being purposely excluded. She was, however, certain that she preferred to be out an
d about to being indoors listening to yet another lecture on proper behavior and deference to gentlemen. The question was where to go. Merton had announced at breakfast that he needed to spend the day with his steward. Was he embarrassed by what had passed between them the day before? Had she been too forward? Or was it no excuse, just the simple truth? Either way she knew she would be spending her time alone and she did not wish to walk where she had walked with him. Perhaps if she explored along the shore, she would find something to match the turmoil of her emotions.

  Not an hour from the Hall, she stepped out of a wooded copse and found herself near the edge of a cliff above the sea. There was a path that ran along the cliff, and she could doubtless have arrived here more quickly had she bothered to ask. As speed was of no importance, she had enjoyed meandering through the woods. Now, however, she had reached a truly dramatic spot.

  The cliff was high along the shore here, much higher than the spot where she had ventured with Lydia on their first day. She could see that whole sections had crumbled off where the sea had eaten away at it down below so she was careful not to step too close to the edge. The tide was out at the moment, but it was clear that there would be little beach below at high tide, and storms probably whipped the sea high up the cliff. She took a deep breath of the salt-laden air and smiled. Even the dead-fish smell of low tide was a pleasure to her, carrying the memory of home. It was curious, she thought, that she could not smell the sea at the Hall, close though it was. At her home in Boston, every breeze carried the scent of the sea. Perhaps it was simply the way the land lay, or perhaps the woods that surrounded the Hall kept the sea breezes away.