A Lady's Honor

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “And I came to England to find Penvenan heirs. Seems neither of us got what we came for.” He edged his mount closer to hers and reached across the space between to clasp one of her hands on the reins. “But we got so much more. The Lord has a way of working that way.”

  She shot him a look intended to be scornful. She feared it came out more inquisitive.

  “The Lord will show you the way to go if you ask.” Rowan seemed to be answering a question she hadn’t intended to ask.

  She shook her head. “He has never paid me any mind.”

  “Jesus died for you too. That’s a lot of attention to start with. He knows the number of hairs on your head.”

  “And likely made them straight instead of curly, and me tall and big-boned instead of petite-like—” Her throat closed for no good reason, and she turned her gaze to the rolling hills, green beneath the brightening sunlight.

  “Miss Morwenna?” Rowan’s voice was so soft, so gentle, Elizabeth’s eyes burned. “To deny her beauty would be dishonest. But saying so doesn’t deny yours.”

  “No, it is simply dishonest.”

  “Fishing for a compliment, miss?” His eyes glinted like a sun-washed sea.

  She smiled. “It sounds that way, but I meant no such thing. I was pointing out how absurd that claim is.”

  “It’s not absurd; it’s to show you how much the Lord cares about you.”

  “I know. I am sorry for teasing you. I simply cannot . . . accept . . . that belief.”

  “Have you asked him to help you accept it?”

  “That seems silly.”

  “That’s because it’s so easy. I’m afraid following is a bit more difficult. Right now I’m having a rather difficult time accepting some of the things I have to do as being in God’s will, but I can’t find another direction either.”

  “What sort of things?” She leaped at the chance to turn the subject away from herself.

  He didn’t respond. Around them, the lane joined the main road where other travelers passed in wagons and on horseback. Few people used carriages in Cornwall. The highways were little more than rutted tracks for the most part. Noting one or two farmers she recognized, Elizabeth released the sheer veil on her hat to hide her face from their view.

  It also hid any telltale expressions from Rowan’s view, giving her time to think about what he said, speculate over what he was doing that was giving him doubts. She pondered what might happen if she asked God to help her accept his love and caring about the path of her life. He might tell her to take actions she didn’t want to, like obey her parents and marry Romsford if he asked her again, or please her grandparents and wed Penvenan. Perhaps worse, at least worse than marrying Penvenan, God might ask her to champion Morwenna’s cause regardless of the consequences, cease her bursts of rebellion, or even give up Bastion Point so Morwenna or Drake could have it.

  Her stomach rolled at that idea. Suddenly, she grew aware that this horse didn’t have Grisette’s smooth gait. Each pace jarred her until her insides felt shaken, until they grew heavy like churned butter.

  “Did you choose this horse from the Pascoe stables?” she asked Rowan.

  “No, ma’am. I wouldn’t choose something so clumsy.”

  “And that one is worse?”

  “This one is a fine choice, but isn’t trained to a sidesaddle.”

  “Ah, to be able to ride astride, as I did as a girl.”

  “It would be safer the way you like to race.”

  “I expect it would, but I suppose I must give up racing.”

  A verse of Scripture ran through her head, though she didn’t know she’d memorized much of the Bible. “Where in the Bible is the verse that says, ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things’?”

  Rowan arched a brow. “The thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. Why?”

  “It just ran through my head. Seems someone quoted it to me enough I remembered it.”

  And that was what she must now do. After today, she must forget about sneaking away to horse fairs, racing down the beach, her desire to swim . . . Rowan Curnow.

  But today she could enjoy herself.

  Outside of town, a field held makeshift paddocks filled with horses and foals, with the stallions in open stalls of their own. Roaming through these displays, pie men, costermongers, and flower girls hawked their wares. Two men indulged in a juggling competition on one side, and on the other, two men drew a crowd as they wrestled. Music from fiddles and flutes flowed over the scene like warm custard on a pudding.

  Elizabeth’s body began to hum like a plucked cello string. She reined in and slid to the ground, suddenly too restless to remain in the saddle and sit still while the horse did the work. “What do we do with these?”

  “Pay someone well to make certain they don’t get sold.” He scanned the throng, then dismounted and led the way around paddocks and vendors to an empty enclosure at one side, where a grizzled man leaned against a rail chewing on a straw. “Will Blamey.” Rowan held out his hand.

  “Rowan Curnow.” The older man shook the proffered hand. “See you got yerself a pretty filly already.”

  Elizabeth blushed.

  Rowan winked. “Always more fun to have company.” He turned the horses over to Will Blamey, then grasped Elizabeth’s hand and headed for one of the pie men. “Hungry?”

  “Ladies don’t admit to hunger.”

  “I expect they don’t. But today”—he spun her to face him—“you’re going to forget you’re a lady.”

  And so she did. She wore no gloves, so his hand was warm and strong around hers, the calluses abrasive in a way that kept that cello string vibrating. She ate meat pies with her fingers and swallowed them down with lemonade. She drew Rowan to the wrestling competition and explained that Cornishmen were usually no-holds-barred in the sport.

  “It looks vicious,” he admitted.

  “It can be, but I don’t know of anyone ever being so much as maimed.” She slid a look from the corner of her eye. “Want to try?”

  So much time passed before he shook his head, she pushed him toward the ring with her hand in the middle of his back. “Go ahead. You’re surely big enough to hold your own.”

  The muscle she felt through his shirt and coat spoke of his strength. No wonder he could lift her into the saddle.

  A violin added its clear notes to the concerto in her blood, with only one tiny string plucking out a warning—a warning she chose to ignore for the time being, but should have heeded. Instead of joining the raucous men around the wrestling matches, he stepped closer to her so her arm encircled his waist.

  With his arm around her shoulders, he turned her toward the horses. “I’m here to buy a brood mare for one thing. See any you like?”

  “Depends on what you want.”

  He told her, and they began to look. He kept his arm around her. She considered shrugging it off and removing her arm from around him, then realized the intimacy was part of her disguise. No one would suspect Miss Elizabeth Trelawny of strolling through a fair with a man’s arm around her. She would never do so in society gatherings.

  She knew no one in society whose arm she’d want around her, not even the man she considered marrying.

  The man she had considered marrying.

  They continued through the equines, talked with owners and brokers, and examined teeth and feet, gaits and coats. In the end, they purchased five horses and made arrangements for their delivery to Penmara. They ate sausages slathered in mustard and returned to their search. Every time their activities required they separate, they returned to the half embrace, their strides long and swinging in unison, their flow of conversation growing more and more sporadic. By the time the sun had begun its descent on the far side of its zenith, Elizabeth could barely get out, “We must be going.”

  “I know.” Rowan faced her, standing too close—close enough for his breath to fan her lips.

>   He bent his head. For a heart-stopping moment, she thought he intended to kiss her right there in front of a hundred Cornishmen and women. Her own lips parted.

  He brushed her lips with the pad of his thumb, then grasped her hand. “Just one country dance?”

  They joined the motley throng forming two lines for the dance. Several fiddles, a drum, and a Spanish guitar joined together to swoop out the lively tune. Hands clapped. Feet stamped, skirts swirled high enough to display beribboned garters holding up cheap stockings.

  Clumsy in her crude shoes, Elizabeth moved like an automaton the first time down the line. Then a farmer with hands like hams and a reek of the stables upon him picked her up by the waist and whirled her around. Her shoes disappeared beneath the dancers’ feet. She shrieked. She laughed. She remembered dancing at fairs and village fetes as a girl, and forgot she was Miss Elizabeth Trelawny of Bastion Point. She was a serving girl, a pirate wench, a gypsy maid on a day’s celebration of life.

  She lost sight of Rowan in the ever-changing figures of the dance, then he was there again hooking his elbow through hers to swirl in a dizzying circle, and vanished again as the movement sent her spinning into the hands of the next man along the line. Her healing leg began to ache. Her feet hurt from the stones and trampled grass, and she suspected she smelled as ripe as her companions. But she didn’t want those moments of abandon to end.

  Until Rowan clasped her hands again and led her down the center of the two lines, away from the dancers, and behind the shelter of a sweetmeats cart. She was still laughing when he kissed her.

  The kiss was neither the timid contact from the ball, nor his bold yet gentle embrace in the meadow. He kissed her with his lips firm on hers, his tongue tangling with hers sweet and savory, gentle and exhilarating. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her fingers in his hair. He held her close, sheltering her from the world to which she did not wish to return. Her wants, her desires, the longings of her heart begged for more than brick and mortar, coffers filled with gold, and commands she must behave in a way that pleased everyone except herself.

  “I love you.” He spoke the words with his lips still on hers. “Come away with me. We can marry on Guernsey on our way to America.”

  America. Of course he intended to return to his homeland.

  Slowly, she lowered her arms and stepped out of the circle of his embrace. Thickness invaded her throat, and she avoided his eyes for fear she would drown in their sea-blue depths. “I cannot marry you and go to America. The grandparents . . . Morwenna . . . England . . .”

  As much as family demands might impede her and brick and mortar confine her, they were all she knew.

  She swallowed against a rising tide of tears. “And I don’t know if I love you enough to be poor with you. And since you are poor . . .” She turned away.

  “I likely want you for your inheritance as much as does my . . . employer. I forgot you think that’s all anyone wants from you. If I could convince you otherwise . . .” His chest rose and fell in a silent sigh, and he curved his hand around her arm. “I’d better get you home before dark.”

  As she paced beside him in silence, she made a decision she expected to regret. Although she knew she could never have a relationship with Rowan Curnow, at the risk of displeasing her family, she could no longer consider marrying Lord Penvenan.

  CHAPTER 20

  SHE TOLD THE GRANDPARENTS OVER BREAKFAST THAT she could not wed Lord Penvenan. “Provided he asks, of course.”

  “That is your decision to make, my dear,” Grandpapa responded without a hitch. “We won’t foist a husband on you whom you don’t want.”

  “Though we would rather you were wed. Even wealthy ladies have a difficult time alone in the world.”

  “It’s precisely because I am a wealthy woman I cannot wed him.” She propped her elbows on the table against all training and rested her chin in her hands. “He’s just one more fortune hunter.”

  The grandparents stared at her.

  “Austell Penvenan is a very wealthy man,” Grandpapa spoke at last. “He’s been quite forthcoming about that.”

  “And has he been forthcoming about being a slave owner?” Elizabeth shot back.

  Grandmama sighed. Grandpapa reached for his pipe.

  “Remove your elbows from the table, Elizabeth,” Grandmama admonished.

  “We knew about the slaves.” Grandpapa began to fill his pipe. “It is one reason Penvenan wishes to marry money. He would like to free his bondsmen, but to do so, he must have money to send them out of South Carolina and resettle them somewhere more hospitable to freed slaves.”

  “But Ro—Mr. Curnow said—” Elizabeth clasped her hands on her lap. “Mr. Curnow mentioned none of this. You’d think the man’s secretary would know of those kinds of plans. Wouldn’t he be needed to make these arrangements?”

  “Perhaps,” Grandmama said, “Mr. Curnow didn’t want you to know.”

  Grandpapa made a wordless exclamation and spilled tobacco fragments across his plate. “Why would he conceal a thing like that?”

  I love you.

  Had he withheld the entire truth to keep her from favoring his master over him? Elizabeth’s hands clenched. Doing so was dishonorable.

  She sounded a little belligerent, and she needed to know the truth from someone. “Does he not need my money to open the mines and make more for himself since he cannot sell Penmara land?”

  “He can lease out the mines,” Grandpapa said. “I believe he intends to do that.”

  “So he doesn’t need my money for the mines?”

  “Elizabeth.” Grandmama reached across the small breakfast table. “You need not concern yourself as to whether or not Lord Penvenan would only offer you marriage for the sake of your inheritance. I believe he would offer for you were you poor.”

  Elizabeth snorted. “No one, Grandmama, wants a plain girl without money.”

  The grandparents exchanged a look, then Grandmama asked, “Who has broken your heart, child, and convinced you that you are unattractive beyond your inheritance?”

  “No one.” Elizabeth stared past Grandmama to the sun-drenched lawn carefully coaxed to grow all the way to the top of the cliff. “Everyone.”

  We can marry on Guernsey.

  She wanted to lay her head on the table and weep for the fear inside that would not allow her to believe in the selflessness of any kind of love, whether God’s or that of an employé.

  “We never should have let your parents take you to London.” Grandpapa dumped tobacco back into its pouch and tucked his pipe into his pocket. “You never thought things like that of yourself before.”

  “Conan never would have made you feel that way.” Grandmama dabbed at her eyes. “And as we said, we don’t wish to make you feel as though you are required to wed Lord Penvenan. On the other hand, we’d like to see you settled and secure, as we’re growing no younger.”

  “I’ll be settled and secure with my own fortune.” Elizabeth pushed back her chair and rose. “Please excuse me. I need . . . air.”

  She needed to call on her cousin. Slipping out of the house without telling anyone other than Miss Pross—close-lipped, loyal Miss Pross—of her destination two days in a row was risky. This time, however, she wouldn’t be gone for long. Not like the day before. Not like those glorious hours of laughter and country fare and dancing. And that kiss.

  Her insides quivered like jelly at the memory. She paused in the passageway to the garden exit and pressed the back of her hand to her lips. Rowan claimed to love her, yet he had withheld important information about his competition . . .

  No, no competition there. Regardless of whether or not she would ever accept that Rowan Curnow loved her, she doubted she could ever accept a marriage from Austell Lord Penvenan. To do so would be unfair to him and herself.

  Even if she never quite believed he loved her, after a night of tossing and turning on her bed, of leaning out the window to stare at the sun rising over the sea, of tremblin
g in every limb at the mere mention of his name, she feared she was in love with Rowan Curnow.

  Of course she was there. Rowan knew if he dared pay a call on Miss Morwenna Trelawny that Miss Elizabeth Trelawny would find him there. He no sooner raised the brass knocker, a pointless exercise with the dogs barking inside, than a crunch of a footfall on the path drew his attention. He turned, and there she stood, not two yards behind him. For a heartbeat, their eyes met, then her cheeks grew pink. She dropped her gaze to the graveled path and folded her arms across her waist.

  Rowan smiled at her. “What a pleasant surprise to see you.”

  He hadn’t expected to see her for days, or maybe never after she barely spoke to him on the way home the night before. Yet there she stood so close, awkward, embarrassed at the encounter . . . and not backing down an inch.

  As he knew she would not. She wouldn’t be the woman he loved if she did.

  She straightened her shoulders a bit and looked past him. “I cannot imagine why I am surprised to see you here, Mr. Curnow.”

  “You should be.” He propped his shoulders against the door and crossed his arms over his chest. On the other side of the panel, someone clipped out a command, and the dogs fell silent. “I’ve never been here before. Not at the house, anyway.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But I haven’t seen Miss Morwenna about, so came to be sure she’s all right.”

  “Of course.” She crossed her own arms over her chest.

  Rowan grinned. “Would you rather I called on you?”

  “I’d rather you remembered your place.”

  “And what place is that?” Though he maintained his casual stance, his tone held a sudden edge. “That place in your heart you won’t let me into?”

  Her nostrils flared. “You’re Lord Penvenan’s secretary, are you not, someone to whom you owe your livelihood and education? You would think you could be honest about him.”