Luke nodded and stood, convinced the girl was a mind reader since he didn’t think he had allowed his confusion at her appearance to show.
‘I did.’
He indicated the seats in front of the fireplace and she took one. He sat across from her and found his dire mood lifting as he anticipated a conversation that ought by rights to have blackened it.
‘I apologise if I have kept you waiting,’ she said. ‘Her ladyship dismissed me straight after luncheon but your sister was in a panic about punts and so I gave her a hand.’
‘Punts?’ Luke sent her a confused look.
‘For the party. There are only two currently on the lake, and she needed to inspect the remaining ones and ensure they are sturdy enough.’
Luke laughed. ‘Emma is trying too hard. They will only be used on the lake, not on open sea. If anyone takes a ducking, they will likely survive.’
Miss Latimer’s lips curved into a reluctant smile. ‘I have this morning discovered just how expensive an elegant lady’s attire can be. Lady Emma wouldn’t want to be the unwitting cause of any damage in that respect.’
‘Heaven forbid!’
‘Besides, she is desperate to show you how capable she is.’
‘She doesn’t need to prove anything to me. I am already more than aware of her efficiency.’
‘Then perhaps you should tell her so.’ Luke arched a brow. ‘I apologise if that sounded presumptuous. You know your sister a great deal better than I do. It’s just that she is not quite as confident as she makes herself out to be. I know that feeling very well and have sympathy for her.’
‘I will speak with her.’ Luke’s expression sobered. ‘The incident this morning. Can you tell me about it please?’
‘With pleasure. Your grandmother and I had intended to walk around the lake, or so I thought. She had other plans, and decided that we had to go into Swindon to purchase dresses for me.’ Luke frowned. ‘Please be assured that I didn’t make the suggestion. In fact, I fought against it. I am sorry if my attire gives offence, but I mean no disrespect. Anyway, your grandmamma insisted upon spending far more than I have ever lavished on myself before, and I cannot repay her until I myself am paid. But I am determined to repay her. I don’t require charity. I expect the accounts will cross your desk and it’s important that you understand I expect the amounts to be deducted from my salary. It’s just that her ladyship is such a force of nature when she makes up her mind on a subject and there is no stopping her, as I’m sure you know.’ She finally allowed a brief pause. ‘Oh dear, I’m running on, aren’t I?’ She covered her mouth with one hand. ‘I always do when I am embarrassed and your grandmother embarrassed me with her generosity, and by making me feel inadequate.’
Luke chuckled. ‘Are you finished?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied primly.
‘Well then, I am sorry if Grandmamma embarrassed you. As you say, she is a law unto herself. As to repayment, we will worry about that in due course. As for taking advantage of Grandmamma’s kind heart, she would be furious if she knew you were aware that she possesses one, especially so soon after coming here. I am glad you enjoyed your morning’s shopping, even if it was marred by Mrs Simpson’s appearance. How did you happen to come upon her?
Luke frowned when Miss Latimer explained.
‘There was nothing accidental about it,’ she concluded by saying. ‘I don’t know who the lady is, other than what she told us, but I am convinced the meeting was deliberately contrived.’ Luke was taken aback when Miss Latimer wrinkled her brow, leaned forward and placed a hand on his forearm. ‘She means you harm, my lord. I beg you, don’t be taken in by her.’
Luke mirrored her frown. ‘How could you possibly know that?’
Her demeanour, up to that point refreshingly open and honest, became evasive. ‘It is simply a feeling I got the moment she approached us. A very strong feeling.’
He blinked at her. ‘A feeling?’
‘Yes, my intuition seldom plays me false and on this occasion it screamed a warning that her intentions are…well, duplicitous.’
‘Woman’s intuition.’ Luke’s disappointment probably showed in his scathing expression. ‘I had thought better of you than that.’
‘Really, my lord?’ She astonished him by matching his tone. Accustomed to being treated as though his word was law, Luke couldn’t decide if he was more impressed or insulted by her forwardness. ‘Then I mistook the matter when you turned your back on the lady without even acknowledging her greeting and looked ready to commit murder. Do you make a point of being impolite to beautiful women whom you come across in the street?’
If she was aware that she had overstepped the bounds by accusing him of being deliberately impolite, it didn’t seem to concern her and she now looked as angry as he had felt earlier in the day. He waited for an apology that didn’t materialise. She seemed perfectly content to allow the stilted silence to spread between them indefinitely. Luke, who was comfortable with silences as a general rule, felt compelled to break this one.
‘If you expect me to take your warning seriously,’ he said, choosing not to give her a trimming for being so impertinent, ‘you will have to do better than “a feeling”.’
She stood and crossed the room to the window, staring out at the lake but probably not seeing it. Luke stood too, not wanting to have her back turned to him, preventing him from reading her expression.
‘Very well, but you will laugh.’
‘Believe me, Miss Latimer, nothing remotely connected to Mrs Simpson inspires me to laughter.’
*
Flora wondered if she had taken complete leave of her senses. She wanted to keep this position, not be dismissed from it after just two days and being branded as more delusional than the lady she had been appointed to care for. Whatever had she been thinking, blurting out to the earl that Mrs Simpson meant him harm? She knew better than to advertise a gift that often felt more like a curse. Some of the chastisements that had been meted out to her as a child—unnecessarily cruel punishments—had taught her to be cautious. If she sensed that a person harboured disreputable intentions, she attempted to warn the person at risk in a roundabout manner. She recalled her own grandmother’s advice. No one will thank you, child. Instead you will be labelled as a trouble-maker, or worse. Use your gift for the greater good but do not place yourself at risk.
Wise words and ones that Flora had tried to live by—had lived by, more or less, until this point. Only her father, who had abhorred his mother’s second sight and considered her to have been touched by the devil, knew better—hence the punishments. A lot of people nowadays were willing to open their minds to the possibility of a spirit world, of good and evil beyond human understanding, and communications from beyond the grave. Her father’s mind was firmly closed to any such possibility, and he became irate if he heard mention of it. Mediums, séances and spirit guides abounded, and most of them in Flora’s opinion were charlatans willing to exploit the grieving and gullible to further their own ends.
The earl, sitting across from her and eyeing her with icy derision, clearly shared her father’s view of the hereafter—heaven or hell and nothing in between. That should not surprise her, which made her instinctive warning to be on his guard against Mrs Simpson doubly hard to explain. In retrospect it was crystal clear that he had no intention of involving himself with the woman—his refusal to even look at her should have told her at least that much. His manners were always very correct, so to deal a lady the cut direct spoke volumes for his disdain. They clearly had some sort of history that Mrs Simpson was keen to re-enact. The earl was not. She absolutely should not have meddled, but Mrs Simpson’s aura was so dark—darker than any other she could recall reading—that the warning had slipped unbidden from her lips. Now she had to explain it.
‘I don’t expect you to believe me, Lord Swindon,’ she said, lifting her chin defiantly, ‘but I have an ability to sense when something is not quite right about a person, usually just by
touching them. But Mrs Simpson’s intentions towards you are so violent—’
‘Violent?’ He raised a brow, looking faintly amused.
‘Perhaps not in the physical sense, but she most certainly means you harm. Be in no doubt about that. Her malevolence is so strong that I didn’t even need to touch her in order to feel it.’ She stared directly at him, defying him to mock her. ‘Make what you will of what I have just told you. Laugh. Dismiss it as a result of a fertile imagination.’ She leaned towards him, eyes burning intently. ‘Call it women’s intuition if you must, but part of you, a small part of your brain, suspects that I just might be right.’
‘Because you can sense bad intentions, I suppose,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘Really, Miss Latimer, you disappoint me. I thought you had more sense than to believe such hocus-pocus. I am impressed by the manner in which you have brought my grandmother out of herself so quickly, that much I’ll grant you, but I shall take a very dim view of it if you start having séances in her rooms.’
Flora bridled at the suggestion, even though she should have anticipated it. The unenlightened tended to be fatuous and judgemental. ‘I am not a medium, Lord Swindon. I do not talk to the dead, not do I make objects move around the room.’ Although she had done so once when thinking deeply about the malevolent spirit that haunted a cottage on the outskirts of Salisbury when she called there to visit a sick woman. At death’s door with no hope of pulling through, the woman made a near miraculous recovery once her home was cleansed of the restless spirit. Flora had absolutely no idea how she had done it, she hadn’t even known she possessed the ability, and had told no one of her success for fear of being committed to a lunatic asylum. She folded her arms defensively across her chest and turned once again to face the view. ‘My warning was kindly meant and I am sorry you feel the need to ridicule it. I thought you more enlightened than that.’
‘I think you believe what you say.’
She turned back again, too furious to temper her words. ‘You can disbelieve me if you like, but please don’t be condescending. It doesn’t become you.’
‘Come and sit down again and let us discuss this in a rational manner.’
She reluctantly resumed her seat, sitting ramrod straight, tension and anger radiating through her body in equal measure. She liked it here and wanted to retain her position, but if Lord Swindon continued to scorn her beliefs then she would leave and find something else to do. Goodness alone knew what. She had little money of her own, and the earl would be unlikely to give her a reference. Even so, she would starve before she returned to Cathedral Close, especially so soon, obliged to admit defeat and face the prospect of marriage to the odious Mr Bolton.
‘I was not, I can assure you, my lord, being irrational, despite how it may have sounded. Your reaction explains why, as a general rule, I don’t speak about my ability.’
‘I understand.’ The earl threw back his head and sighed. ‘But look at the matter from my perspective. You tell me that Mrs Simpson intends to do me harm, yet you must have been able to tell from my reaction to her that I neither like nor approve of her.’
Flora’s anger erupted. ‘And you think I traded upon that fact to convince you that I have second sight, or whatever you want to call it.’ Tears blurred her vision—tears of anger and disappointment. ‘Why on earth would I do such a thing? What could I possibly hope to gain from it?’
He contemplated her for a prolonged moment before responding. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I am satisfied that your only consideration was for my family.’
She nodded her acceptance of his apology, suspecting that he seldom felt the need to apologise to anyone, much less the hired help. She felt appeased, even though she knew he didn’t believe in her abilities. ‘My suspicions were aroused for no reason other than that her effort to draw herself to the attention of your grandmother was very clumsy. As I explained earlier, she barged into the footman carrying our bandboxes, claiming to have turned the corner in a hurry and not seen him.’ Flora paused and looked directly at the earl. ‘And yet the nearest corner was over a hundred yards away. Unless she walked along with her eyes closed, she had plenty of opportunity to avoid the collision. I imagine she assumed that we would be so concerned for the welfare of our possessions that we wouldn’t doubt her explanation.’ Flora huffed. ‘I don’t believe your grandmother did.’
‘But you did,’ the earl said musingly.
‘Most certainly. Part of my duties is to ensure that the countess is not troubled by unwanted attention. Those labouring under the misapprehension that she is verging upon senility might try to take advantage of her confusion. Mrs Simpson was intent upon ingratiating herself with the countess, there is no question about that. Unfortunately for her, she miscalculated. I believe your grandmother still has a sharp brain in her head, even though she pretends otherwise, and recognised Mrs Simpson at once for the social climber that she very obviously is.’
‘Mrs Simpson and I were acquainted when I was at university, in case you are wondering.’
‘I was,’ Flora replied, aware that he wouldn’t believe her if she pretended not to be curious.
‘Suffice it to say that she caused considerable mischief for myself and my friends and it did not end well. I thought I had seen the last of her, but I seems I got that wrong.’ He sighed. ‘She is considering moving to this part of the world.’
‘With the intention of resuming her friendship with you, no doubt.’
‘Perhaps, but I have left her in no doubt that her ambitions in that regard will be to no avail.’
‘And now you are concerned that she will not give up, I suppose.’ Flora nodded decisively and continued speaking without giving him an opportunity to respond. ‘I can quite see how that would make you uneasy. Beautiful and indulged members of both sexes tend, in my opinion, to assume that they can have whatever they want, simply because Mother Nature happened to smile upon them.’ Flora flashed a mischievous grin. ‘And clearly she wants you.’ Lord have mercy, did I really just make that comment to an earl with whom am I barely acquainted? ‘She has tried and failed with you and your grandmother, but your sisters might be more gullible.’
The earl sat forward, a frown crumbling his forehead. ‘Ye gods, I had not thought of that!’
‘Don’t look so concerned,’ Flora said in a placating tone. ‘There are now only three days before the party and I cannot think that your sisters will have any reason to leave the estate before then. There is too much for them to do here. And if they do go out, I dare say you can make sure that the groom who accompanies them keeps any strangers well away from them. After all, Mrs Simpson can hardly lie in wait all day every day in the vain hope that someone from your family will venture into Swindon.’
The earl nodded. ‘Even so, my sisters’ freedom should not have to be restricted.’
‘Part and parcel of being an important family, I suppose.’ She leaned forward. ‘Besides, if you announce your intention to marry during the course of the—’
‘Whatever put that idea into your head?’ he asked haughtily.
‘Your sisters,’ Flora replied crisply. ‘They are convinced that you intend to do so for their sakes, and they feel wretched about it.’
‘I am considering the possibility, nothing more than that. They deserve the right to enjoy being presented. Grandmamma might not be senile, but she is eccentric. Besides, the rigours would be too much for her.’
‘Well anyway, it is not for me to advise you—’
‘But that will not prevent you from doing so.’ A hint of amusement lit his dark eyes.
‘Sorry. You must blame my father for my willingness to assume that I know what is best for others. Not that I was ever permitted to voice my opinions beneath his roof, but I saw him frequently using his position within the church as carte blanche to tell others how to conduct themselves.’
‘You don’t like your father?’
Flora flashed a wry smile. ‘I am a hopeless case, am I not? I am awar
e that I owe him a duty of respect and obedience but I’m afraid I haven’t shown him much of either. But then, duty works both ways. He is my father, but he has only ever tried to bully me and shape me into something that I am not and never will be.’
‘I see,’ the earl said mildly.
‘I hope I have not shocked you into dismissing me.’ She spread her hands and offered a small smile of apology. ‘Anyway, we were discussing your situation and if you will excuse me for saying so, if you do decide to marry, then Mrs Simpson will have lost and will have no further reason to pursue you. Although,’ she added pensively, ‘it would be a very great pity if you felt obliged to marry simply to be rid of the woman, and I dare say you dislike being told what to do as much as I do.’
‘Let me worry about Mrs Simpson.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me when you first discovered that you can see into the future.’
‘I cannot.’ She shrugged. ‘I simply know if a person means well, or has harmful intentions. It’s hard to explain. I simply get this image inside my head, sometimes so strong that it gives me a headache. My head was pounding after the interlude with Mrs Simpson, and as I said earlier, I didn’t even touch her. My grandmother had the gift of the sight, which I have often thought is what made my father turn to the church when he settled upon a career. He despised what his mother did, referred to her as a witch and all but disowned her.’
‘Very Christian,’ the earl remarked in a droll tone.
‘I adored my grandmamma.’ Flora smiled at the memory. ‘She was considered eccentric, which is perhaps why I understand the countess so well. Grandmamma told me to use my gift for the greater good but not to talk about it, or I would find myself stigmatised in the same manner that she had been. She said people were unenlightened and didn’t believe anything unless they had tangible proof.’ Flora nodded and fixed the earl with a penetrating look. ‘She was right about that.’
‘I accept that you acted with my interests at heart and I thank you for that.’ He stood, indicating that the interview had come to an end. ‘However, I am sceptical and have yet to be convinced that your deduction regarding Mrs Simpson was anything more than instinctive.’
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