by Liz Carlyle
“Well, there it is,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Burlingame’s grand façade in all her Baroque glory.”
But Elizabeth Colburne merely took his proffered arm, and lifted her nose. “Has it only three wings, then?” she said a little haughtily. “Rowend Hall—the seat of my dear, belated grandpapa, the Earl Rowend—has at least six.”
“Has it indeed?” he had murmured, escorting her up one side of the wide staircase. “I should very much like to see how the architect managed that feat of engineering. But these are called pavilions, I believe. Ordinary wings would never do for the Tarletons.”
But the aspiring baroness did not deign to answer, and instead turned the full force of her newfound hauteur upon the erect, elderly woman who stood just inside the front door.
The Countess of Hepplewood leaned much of her weight upon a solid ebony walking stick and watched their arrival with something less than unbridled enthusiasm. Beneath her elaborately coiffed, graying hair, she wore deep mourning and a piercing, hawkish gaze.
Napier greeted her civilly, but not warmly. He did not dread his aunt; indeed, he scarcely knew Lady Hepplewood, and cared even less for her opinion. Or so he told himself—perhaps in self-disillusionment, for he felt oddly grateful for the small, warm hand upon his arm as they suffered the first formal introductions.
It was a slender reed indeed he clutched, relying upon a disingenuous virago who’d been pressed into his service. But moments later Miss Colburne sat as if holding court in Burlingame’s grand salon, her spine stiff as a duchess, a delicate ivory teacup held just so, one pinky tilted elegantly aloft—along with her nose—and Lady Hepplewood watching her with a sort of wary curiosity.
Though decorum precluded mentioning it, Lady Hepplewood had reserved a special sort of attention for her visitor’s unusual hair, and Napier realized his demand had been not just selfish, but shortsighted. No lady of his acquaintance wore anything but bland buns looped about with heavy braids. But that fierce red chaos of curls and satin . . . well, it was simply her. And he would as soon not think about why that mattered to him.
“I fear, Miss Colburne, I know little of your family,” said Lady Hepplewood pointedly, “since Saint-Bryce wrote only that he was bringing his future wife.”
“Oh,” said Napier blandly, his teacup clicking softly back onto its saucer, “did I not mention a name?”
Lady Hepplewood shot a disapproving glance in Napier’s direction. “You did not,” she said. “Did I hear my grand-nephew aright that you’ve a connection to Lord Rowend?”
“Oh, indeed, ma’am, the ninth earl was my grandpapa.” Miss Colburne made a nonchalant gesture that set her brilliant curls shimmering in the light slicing through the tall windows. “Though I cannot claim we were close. Mamma was his favorite, but dear Grandpapa disapproved, you know, of her marrying a mere baronet—a tragic lapse in discernment which I, of course, was resolved never to repeat—” Here, she paused just long enough to turn a doting sunbeam of a smile on Napier, who had wedged his length into an overstuffed chair at her elbow. “—wasn’t I, my darling?”
“Oh, you are nothing, my love, if not resolved,” he managed.
“How single-minded of you,” said Lady Hepplewood coolly, her teaspoon tinkling around her china cup.
Miss Colburne laughed lightly. “Actually, I fear, Lady Hepplewood, that I am quite incorrigible.” Again, the doting expression fell upon him—row upon row of brilliant white teeth and eyes that sparkled blue-green fire. “And my dear Mr. Napier makes little answer, for he knows I am teasing him.”
“Oh?” Lady Hepplewood barely cracked a smile. “May I know in what way?”
Miss Colburne leaned conspiratorially near the lady. “When we first met,” she said in a dramatic whisper, “my dear Mr. Napier did not trouble to tell me of his family connections. Can you imagine?”
“Actually, no.” Lady Hepplewood looked down her nose at Napier. “I cannot.”
“Indeed not, for he was very cruel,” she declared, “and for weeks on end quite happily let me think that I’d fallen in love with a pauper.”
“And there was such a string of gallants before me,” Napier dryly remarked, “one marvels you spared me a second glance.”
“Really, my darling, you mustn’t fib to your aunt,” she warned, eyes firing with humor. “Despite my fine lineage, my age was against me, as well you know. And the hair—well, not every man will have a redhead, I admit, for we are thought quite—”
“—incorrigible,” Napier interjected, “I think you said.”
“No, willful and hot-tempered, I meant to say,” Miss Colburne supplied. “But there, my dear, I never quarrel with your opinion, do I? I’ll take a mere incorrigible and be glad of it.”
“And what of your family?” said Lady Hepplewood delicately. “Have they no objection to your traveling such a distance unattended?”
Miss Colburne looked only slightly abashed. “Frightfully American of me, isn’t it?” she said. “When my aunt died two years ago, I gave propriety less thought, perhaps, than was wise. But I had quite resolved not to marry, so I set up housekeeping with dear Fanny, and my elderly nurse. Until Mr. Napier swept me off my feet, I expected to live out my days a spinster.”
Here, she broke off to sip her tea, still held so gracefully. “My heavens, Lady Hepplewood, is this a most unusual brew. Do I detect a hint of . . . yes, jasmine, is it not?”
Lady Hepplewood tilted her head in stiff acknowledgment. “It is scented with jasmine flowers,” she said. “An unusual tea which I’m told is quite superior to all others.”
“Indeed, you were told rightly,” said Miss Colburne with an air of sophistication. She paused to sip again. “Mo li hua cha, the Chinese call it. But in a green base here, not some common oolong.”
“Er, yes.” Lady Hepplewood looked surprised. “I believe it is green.”
Miss Colburne sat her cup down and gazed about the opulent chamber with an expression that suggested she’d just made up her mind that Burlingame was not, after all, flea infested.
“Lady Hepplewood, I compliment you on your discerning palate,” she finally said. “One never knows what inconveniences one might have to suffer in the country, does one? But the house is quite admirable, I think, and the best hostesses in London would not be bold enough to serve such a tea as this.”
“Thank you,” said Lady Hepplewood, showing little sign of thawing. But the countess had, at the very least, sheathed her claws.
“Well, whatever it is,” said Napier, “it’s most welcome after a dusty drive.”
The claws came back out with a near-audible snick! as she turned her disapproval upon him. “And as I hope I made plain, Saint-Bryce, I do wish you’d sent word from Swindon,” she said frostily. “Really, it will not do for Duncaster’s heir to be seen haring about the county in hired equipage.”
“Lady Hepplewood is quite right, my dear.” Elizabeth Colburne shot him an affectionately chiding glance. “I said as much at the station, did I not? But as usual, you would not listen.”
“Does a gig from Swindon’s livery even rise to the level of equipage?” said Napier evenly. “But if you please, ma’am, I mean to cling to my surname a while longer.”
At that, Lady Hepplewood’s spine drew another notch straighter, if such a thing were possible. “What nonsense,” she replied. “Indeed, Nicholas had no business working himself into such a puerile snit as to change it in the first place. And a Gretna Green marriage in the bargain! He was just a boy, yes, but what he did to spite Duncaster defies all logic.”
Napier was on the verge of snapping back that perhaps his father had changed his name to reflect the family he did have rather than the one that had cast him so cavalierly aside. But the truth was, he was no longer sure of his father’s choices. And after a chary glance at him, Miss Colburne leapt to Lady Hepplewood’s rescue.
“Your great-aunt’s point is well made, my darling,” she said sweetly. “Do as you please in London, to be su
re. But here it may confuse people.”
Just then, a tray laden with dainties was brought in and set down beside the tea service.
“I thought at this hour, you might be famished,” said Lady Hepplewood stiffly. “Do help yourselves.”
“Thank you,” said Napier, who was starving.
“Ooh, lemon biscuits!” Miss Colburne exclaimed, plucking one. “Wait—” Her gaze fixed on Napier’s plate, then narrowed disapprovingly.
“What?” he said.
She reached across and snatched from his plate the sliver of sandwich he’d just picked up. “Cucumber!” she chided. “You know, my darling, that it unsettles your digestion. Take a plain bit of cake, if you please.”
Napier shot her a dark glance and watched his sandwich go. She bit into it with her sharp white teeth and then, turning her head ever so slightly, shot him a saucy wink.
And in that split second, it happened. Lust shot through him like a red-hot poker, visceral and fierce—along with the burning desire to snatch Miss Colburne up by her bright red curls and lay the business side of his hand to her bottom.
But the spell was immediately broken.
“Or perhaps the egg mayonnaise with cress?” suggested Lady Hepplewood, turning the plate to offer them. “I always find that soothing. Might I ask how the two of you met?”
Napier put his plate down with an awkward clack! and attempted to throttle his emotions. Good God, was he taking leave of his senses?
Elizabeth Colburne carried on without him. “Why, we met at a literary reading,” she smoothly lied, brushing a crumb from her green velvet skirt. “An evening of poetry at the home of our mutual friend Lady Anisha Stafford—she’s the Marquess of Ruthveyn’s sister.”
“Poetry?” Lady Hepplewood turned to Napier. “I would not have taken you for the literary type, Saint-Bryce. Who was the poet?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Napier. “I turned up because I owed the lady a favor. The fellow was a dead bore.”
Just then, the ormolu mantel clock struck the hour. Lady Hepplewood turned to frown at it. “Gwyneth and Diana should have returned from the vicarage by now,” she said irritably. “How that pair does dawdle. Really, I wish I had known to expect you today. Anne and Sir Philip are in London—he sits in the Lower House, you know—and Duncaster is unavailable.”
Anne was none of Napier’s concern, and his grandfather was likely resting at this hour. “I beg you will not trouble yourself over it, ma’am,” he said. “I mean to stay some time, as Duncaster requested.”
But just then, a faint sound caught his ear. He glanced up to see a liveried footman sweep open one of the massive doors. A pretty, round-figured female in brown stood in the shadows beyond on the threshold, holding a girl’s hand. The footman had bent forward to whisper something in the woman’s ear.
Her expression stiffening, the woman swept almost haughtily past. In the light, Napier recognized the girl as Beatrice, Saint-Bryce’s only child by his second wife—and now, sadly, an orphan.
Beatrice, Napier had noticed, seemed a peculiar girl. At the age of perhaps ten or eleven, she seemed by turns alternately childlike and guarded. But Napier thought the artlessness a ruse, for unless he missed his guess, there was a certain perceptiveness hidden in her eyes.
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” said the woman in brown, “but you did say we might come down?”
The lady was introduced as Beatrice’s governess, Mrs. Jansen. She bobbed a curtsy, a wary eye still upon the footman. But by then Beatrice had already slipped her hand and come fully into the room, her gaze cutting shyly toward Miss Colburne.
“If you please, ma’am,” she said to Lady Hepplewood, making a dash of a curtsy that set her blonde ringlets bouncing, “I wish to meet the new lady.”
Lady Hepplewood again gave her regal nod, beckoned Mrs. Jansen to sit, and sent the footman scurrying for more china.
“A pleasure, Mrs. Jansen.” Miss Colburne shone her brilliant smile upon Beatrice. “How do you do, Miss Tarleton? May I call you Beatrice? Or even Bea, perhaps?”
“Oh, Bea is fine,” she said, scooting closer to the tea table. “Your hair is awfully red. Why is it so short?”
“Beatrice!” Mrs. Jansen colored furiously.
“That will do, Beatrice.” Lady Hepplewood punctuated the command with a hard thump of her stick.
But Miss Colburne merely widened her eyes ingenuously. “Why, we were just talking about my hair,” she said, passing a plate to the girl. “Are you by chance clairvoyant?”
“I don’t think so.” Beatrice paused for a minute, nibbled on a lemon biscuit, then looked up again. “But I was wondering—are you going to marry Saint-Bryce instead of Diana?”
Miss Colburne brightened her smile, if such a thing were possible. “Well, Diana has not asked me to marry her,” she teased. “But Saint-Bryce has. Shall I have him, do you suppose?”
Beatrice gazed at Miss Colburne very solemnly. “I daresay you ought,” said the girl. “Gwyneth says he’s a good catch now, and that Diana is a moon-eyed idiot.”
Napier heard Lady Hepplewood’s sharp intake of breath. “Beatrice, perhaps you and I might discuss this later?” he gently suggested, leaning forward in his chair. “Perhaps I might visit you in the schoolroom someday?”
“Really, Saint-Bryce, you mustn’t encourage impertinence,” chided Lady Hepplewood. “Beatrice must remember her place.”
Napier bit back his frustration. “Her place is in this house,” he said tightly. “Beatrice may lack tact but Burlingame is her home, and her father is but recently departed.”
Lady Hepplewood shot him a look that made plain she did not welcome correction. “And what, pray, has that to do with anything?”
“Children require certainty,” he replied, forcing a calm voice. “They have a right to understand what is happening around them, and to them. Their sense of well-being depends upon it.”
“How very insightful, my dear,” said Miss Colburne, who immediately struck up another superficial conversation, this time directed at Mrs. Jansen—something to do with her French governess.
Napier did not attend. Instead he let his gaze drift about the ostentation of the room and thought about Beatrice. Until recently, her father had been heir to all this, and her place in this house secure. Now, with both parents dead, her half sisters a dozen years older, and Lady Hepplewood thumping that damned black stick at every misstep, Beatrice probably felt uncertain of her position here. God knew he did.
Was it really possible all this would be his to steward into the next generation? And where was that next generation to come from?
Oh, he knew the answer to that one, and it gave him great pause. His eyes settling on the collection of gilt-framed landscapes that flanked the soaring marble chimneypiece, he decided no one could be more ill suited to the task.
On his initial visit to Burlingame a few months ago he had been immediately awestruck by its magnificence. And for the first time, it had sunk into him just what his father had given up, and how greatly his circumstances had been altered by the sacrifice.
The Honorable Mr. Nicholas Tarleton had been a child of great wealth and privilege. Had he imagined, in some fit of childish pique, that altering his name might embarrass this family? So far as Napier could see, the effect had been that of a mosquito bite—a minor annoyance to be complained of only in passing.
No, he sensed no humility here; the sheer hauteur and sense of privilege remained intact, unblemished by doubt. Already he’d seen it in his grandfather. But he had felt almost at once that a sort of darkness hung here, too. And yet he had found nothing—nothing save an old man already lost in a murky world of incoherence.
But Hepplewood had been in his sixties, arthritic and gouty. Saint-Bryce, on the other hand, had been perfectly well. Bea’s father had not been young, perhaps, but the coincidence still struck Napier as odd, and the strange sense of gloom he’d felt upon first entering this house still lingered, casting a pall that even he co
uld feel.
Or perhaps that only he could feel?
Perhaps this was merely what it felt like to be an outsider?
Lady Hepplewood had made it plain at his very first visit that Napier was scarcely welcome. Even the fact that he had come, not to presume a family connection, but at her dying husband’s behest had not swayed the lady to warmth. In fact, it had seemed to irritate her.
But then Napier had been a nobody, for his uncle Saint-Bryce and his bride-to-be had been fully expected to do their duty. It had fallen to Diana Jeffers to place as many potential heirs between Napier and Burlingame Court as were physically possible to conceive.
But two women were already dead from trying to bear a son, and the third had not got her opportunity after all. He wondered if Miss Jeffers was angry, or just relieved.
He returned to the present when Beatrice set down her plate, and Lady Hepplewood rose from her chair. It seemed he had dropped a pall over the conversation that even the glib and glorious-haired Miss Colburne could not throw off. With a sense of relief that tea was over, Napier jerked to his feet and offered Lady Hepplewood his arm.
Grudgingly, she took it. “You will doubtless wish to rest before dinner,” she said as they strolled sedately along the wide swath of carpet that led to the massive, gilt-trimmed doors. “I’ve instructed Gwyneth to put you in the east pavilion, so that—”
But her intent was not revealed. Instead, in that instant, the salon doors were flung wide again and this time Miss Gwyneth Tarleton herself strode past the footman, with Diana Jeffers a dozen steps behind her.
Gwyneth was a tall, horsey female with few graces and a somewhat brusque manner. The lady flicked an assessing glance down his length as she drew up before him.
“Heavens, Saint-Bryce,” she barked. “We did not know to expect you today.”
“Yes, that point has been driven home to me,” he said dryly. “Perhaps my letter could have been more specific. How do you do, Miss Tarleton? Miss Jeffers?”