by M. C. Beaton
“Your parents are well, I trust?” added Mr. Cummings quickly. “And Miss Emily?”
“Oh, yes. We are all invited to the Harrisons for supper. Mama is in high alt.”
“And you?”
“I think it is very gracious of Sir James and Lady Harrison,” said Mary, primly.
“And yet,” said Mr. Cummings, “I have seen Sir James and his lady snub your parents quite dreadfully outside this very church.”
Mary sighed. “That was before I was known to be marrying an earl. For my part, I do not care to go, but you must realize it means so much to Mama.”
Mr. Cummings looked at the delicate oval of Mary’s face, at the brown curls peeping out from under the clumsy covering of her calash, at the faint shadows under her wide brown eyes. He seemed to be in the grip of some strong emotion. He half held out his hand toward her, and Mary saw with a kind of wonder that the hand shook slightly.
“Miss Anstey,” he began. There was a silence. The wind rose and howled about the church. Up in the steeple, a bell moved and sent down a high, silvery chime. The candles on the altar flared and dipped and flared again.
“Yes, Mr. Cummings?” Mary studied his face anxiously, wondering if he was ill.
“I simply want to wish you all the happiness in the world,” he said in a stifled voice. “I have some calls to make in the parish. Allow me to escort you home.”
It was a very silent walk, Mr. Cummings wrapped in his own thoughts and Mary brooding once more on how she would feel about her fiancé when she saw him on the morrow.
Mary said good day to Mr. Cummings, and hurried up the short drive toward home, unaware that the vicar was still standing mournfully in the road, hat in hand, watching her until she was out of sight.
Miss Emily Anstey toyed with her food at the Harrison supper table and reflected that Sir James and his lady were amazingly like her own parents. They were loud, blunt, and crude. But Mr. and Mrs. Anstey had a certain warmth and kindness that was all too lacking in the Harrisons. Sir James had made it quite plain, over the turtle soup, that he was doing the Ansteys an immense favor by allowing them to cross his threshold. His wife asked innumerable questions about the earl, saying she quite doted on him already. Their son, Billy Harrison, a squat, rather brutish youth, was mercifully silent, although his parents, with many broad winks and hints, put out that he was quite enchanted with Miss Emily.
Emily’s head began to ache and ache, until it seemed as if the pounding in her temples was drowning out every other sound in the room.
Then she heard Mary’s voice. “You have become quite white, Emily. I fear you are unwell.”
“It is the headache,” said Emily wretchedly. “I feel if I could return home and lie down, I might recover quickly. I am sorry Sir James, Lady James, but I fear I must take my leave.”
Mary volunteered to accompany her sister, but her move was pooh-poohed on all sides. The future countess was to be kept till the bitter end.
At last, it was decided that Emily should return alone and send the carriage and servants back again. Feeling a trifle guilty, Mrs. Anstey volunteered to accompany her daughter, but Emily, with the thought of escape so near, was quite vehement in her insistence that she would do very well alone.
As soon as she was safely ensconced in the darkness of the carriage, her headache disappeared like magic. Emily thought of Mary left to the tender mercies of the Harrisons and debated whether to return. But it would be considered very odd of her, and no doubt Sir James and Lady Harrison, whose vanity was only matched by their doting affection for their brutish son, would decide she had returned to be at repulsive Billy Harrison’s side.
The Elms seemed like a sort of modern furniture shop to Emily as she stood in the hall, unfastening the strings of her bonnet after having sent the carriage back.
Everything was so quiet and polished and new and glittery and hushed. It would hardly have surprised her, she thought, if a deferential young man in a long-tailed coat had emerged from the shadows and tried to sell her the hall table. The only things lacking in the house were little white cards with prices on them.
She raised her hands to her head to remove her bonnet and then stood frowning, her hands still up to her head.
There was a bustle and commotion outside. Perhaps some of the neighbors had come to call, although the hour was late. The servants, apart from those who had returned to wait for the rest of the Anstey family, had been given the evening off.
Emily wondered whether to answer the door or pretend there was no one at home.
She hesitated, wondering what to do. The knocker resounded against the door. The imperative rapping seemed to make up her mind for her.
She swung the door open.
A tall man with a harsh, tanned face stood on the threshold. He was dressed in the first stare from his curly, brimmed beaver hat to his many-caped driving coat, opened to reveal a glimpse of formal dress, white cravat, and snowy linen.
“Mary,” he said in a husky voice.
Before Emily could protest, the tall man had swept her into his arms, forced her chin up, and started punishing her mouth with a deep and savage kiss, which held in it ten long years of frustrated passion.
“It’s the earl,” thought Emily. “He was supposed to come tomorrow.” She made a faint noise against the hardness of the lips pressing down on her own, but that only seemed to inflame the earl further. “I cannot possibly say anything until he is finished,” thought Emily, resigning herself to his embrace.
That was a mistake. She became aware of strange surgings in her own body, a feverish heat swept over her, and then she forgot everything and everybody and kissed him back with such passion that the earl groaned in his throat and picked her up in his arms and carried her across the threshold. Her hat tumbled off onto the tiled floor of the hall. The soft glow from the latest thing in oil lamps shone on the gold of her hair.
“The deuce!” said the Earl of Devenham, releasing his grip. Emily fell with a crash onto the hall floor.
She sat up, rubbing her back, and looked ruefully up into the cold gray eyes of the earl.
“Welcome home, my lord,” said Emily Anstey, overcome by an unmaidenly fit of giggles. “W-welcome h-home.”
Chapter 2
The Earl of Devenham stood in front of the fireplace in the drawing room. He had divested himself of his coat, hat, and gloves.
He took out his quizzing glass and turned it this way and that in the light to make sure there was no mark on it, and then raised it to one eye and surveyed the slight figure of Emily Anstey.
Emily looked calmly back until he the glass let fall. He had not said a word since he had helped her to her feet in the hall.
“I owe you an apology,” he said in chilly accents. “With the bonnet hiding your hair, I took you for Mary. You, I gather, are Emily. I remember you well. Always getting in the way.” His level gaze seemed to imply that she had not changed.
“You did not allow me time for explanations,” Emily said crossly. She remembered that kiss and tried to fight down the blush she could feel rising to her cheeks.
“You have not accepted my apology.”
“Your apology is accepted.” Emily bobbed a curtsy. “It is the servants’ night off. Mary and mother and father are visiting a neighbor. I returned because I had the headache. I do not have it now. Would you care for some refreshment?”
A flash of humor briefly lit up his eyes as he listened to the staccato sentences and surveyed the stiff little lady before him. “I would like some wine,” he said in more gentle tones.
“Of course.” Emily hesitated in the doorway. “We expected you tomorrow, my lord.”
“I was anxious to see my future bride,” he said curtly. Then he smiled. “I fear you may have taken all the first warmth of my greeting. I had hoped to reserve it for Mary.”
Emily opened her mouth to reply and found that she could not think of anything to say.
She turned and left the room. When she push
ed open the door leading to the servants’ dining room she found the staff seated at table.
The butler, Parsons, rose at her entrance, followed by the rest of the servants.
“I am so sorry, Parsons,” said Emily. “Lord Devenham has arrived and wished wine and … and … perhaps he has not eaten. I did not think to ask. Mama said it was your evening off, so …”
“I will attend to it immediately, Miss Emily,” said Parsons. “His lordship’s room is ready for him.”
“But it is your evening off….”
“There is nowhere to go in Malden Grand,” said Parsons. “Please return upstairs, Miss Emily. I will follow in a few moments to attend to Lord Devenham’s wishes.”
“There really is nothing to do,” thought Emily, as she scurried back upstairs. “I never thought about it before. I imagined them all visiting other servants, but other servants never seem to have evenings off at all.”
Emily realized with some surprise that her mother, despite her faults, was a kind mistress, and the thought gave her a comforting glow inside. The elegant and formidable earl, with his rich clothes and studied elegance, had been making her dread the return of her parents, so it was pleasant to think of something worthy about them. Certainly the earl must consider them harsh for having refused his suit. On the other hand, even a little place like Malden Grand was full of gossip about Miss This or Mr. That who had had their love life equally ruined. Meg, the baker’s daughter, was in love with a farm laborer, Jim Smithers, but the baker considered Jim far beneath them, so the romance was not allowed to flourish. Because Mr. Anstey had worked hard and long to make his fortune, it was understandable in a way that he should want the best for his daughters when it came to marriage. Mr. Anstey was fond of saying that love and poverty could not live together.
Emily hesitated in the hall. She vaguely remembered the earl when he had been young Captain Tracey. Well, the young and eager captain had gone and was now this formidable amalgam of elegance and tailoring. What on earth would shy little Mary make of him now?
Taking a deep breath, Emily entered the drawing room. She was struck afresh by the harsh and handsome sophistication of the man facing her. His gray eyes were as cold as the North Sea and his jet black hair grew to a widow’s peak on his forehead. He had an autocratic nose and thin, supercilious black brows. His face was tanned, his mouth hard and severe. His mouth … One would never think, looking at that hard and uncompromising mouth, that only a short time ago …
Emily blushed. “The servants are here … I m-mean, they did not go out, and Parsons, that’s our butler, will be bringing your wine directly.”
At that moment, Parsons entered behind Emily, bearing a tray with a decanter of wine and one of brandy which he set on a table beside the fire.
In a stately way, he welcomed the earl to The Elms, and in a cold, businesslike way, the earl rapped out instructions as to the housing of his servants, the care of his baggage, and the grooming of his horses.
Parsons expanded under these curt instructions. This was just the sort of behavior he expected from one of the quality, and since he was fond of his master and mistress, the butler was gleefully looking forward to seeing this high and mighty lord snubbing the local gentry in the same way as Mr. and Mrs. Anstey had been snubbed.
As Parsons was bowing himself out—backward, as if retreating from the presence of royalty—Emily said, “Oh, do send someone over to Sir James’s, Parsons, and tell my parents that my lord is arrived.”
When Parsons had left, Emily sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair and surveyed her future brother-in-law with some trepidation.
Embarrassed into saying the first thing that came into her head, she blurted out, “You are not as I remember you.”
He poured himself a glass of wine and said over his shoulder, “You will take wine with me?” He poured a glass for Emily without waiting for her reply.
“You are not as I remember you, either, Miss Emily,” he said, turning and handing her a brimming glass. “You are remarkably like your sister. That is what deceived me. I did not know it was you until I saw the color of your hair. It was always golden.”
“Mary is still the same,” said Emily. She took a great gulp of wine, choked slightly, and rubbed her nose, hoping she would not sneeze. “People often think we are twins.”
“I am glad time has stood still for Miss Anstey,” said the earl coldly. A bitter look crossed his face. “I cannot say the same for myself.”
“No,” said Emily naively, “now, you look like an earl.”
“Indeed? The few earls of my acquaintance are portly and elderly. I did not know an earl looked like anything in particular.”
“Well, you know, my … my lord …”
“You may call me Peregrine.”
“Thank you. I mean you look so cold and haughty,” said Emily earnestly. “Just like a character in a book I’m reading.”
“Which book?”
“The Travels of Lord Sapphire. “
“And I look like this Lord Sapphire?”
“No, my … Peregrine. But there is this marvelous villain called the Earl of Perrengo, and he is most harsh and wicked. The heroine, the Lady Bianca, repulses his advances, but he is very lustful, you see,” went on Emily, so enthralled in the story that she quite forgot the earl was in the room. “Lord Sapphire is quiet and noble. Of course, he is not a lord at the beginning of the book, for his wicked nurse put her daughter’s baby in the cradle and sent him out to be brought up by lowly woodcutters. He rescues Bianca just as the earl is carrying her off to his castle in the mountains.”
“Does he throw her over his saddlebow?”
“Yes!” said Emily, delighted and surprised. “How did you guess?”
“Oh, I do it all the time.”
“It was a monstrous exciting story,” said Emily, clasping her hands in her lap. “Lord Sapphire was so good and noble, and Mary said he was a splendid sort of man, but I rather thought the villain the more exciting. You see …”
“I have never heard such a farrago of nonsense in all my life,” said the earl.
“How sad. I suppose you are one of those people who think novels wicked and only read improving books.”
“Exactly.”
Emily took another gulp of her wine. If only Mary would come home!
After a long silence, Emily ventured, “You know, since you find the tone of my conversation too low, it might be civil of you to suggest a topic.”
“Perhaps,” he said moodily. He turned and kicked a log in the fire with one Hessian-booted foot. Unfortunately, the log contained a great amount of hot resin; the resin stuck to his boot and the boot caught fire.
“Get your boot off! Get your boot off!” screamed Emily.
“I am getting it off,” he said testily. “No, don’t …”
But he was too late.
Emily had snatched up the decanter of brandy and poured it over his smoking boot, which burst into blue and yellow flames.
“Idiot!” howled the earl.
He raced out of the room, out of the hall, out of the house, with Emily hard at his heels.
“Please return to the house, Emily,” the earl said crossly, as he stood with one foot steaming in a puddle on the lawn. “It has started to rain.”
“I didn’t know brandy burned!” wailed Emily, wringing her hands. “I shall never drink it. Never! Only think of the damage to one’s internal being.”
“I really don’t think the damage is at all the same,” said the earl, limping back toward the house, “unless you drink a glass of brandy and throw a lucifer down after it.”
He sat in a chair in the hall and ruefully examined the charred remains of his boot. “Another pair of boots, John,” he said without raising his voice.
“Very good, my lord,” came a voice from the landing above, and Emily started.
“My Swiss,” explained the earl. “He is invaluable. Always somewhere on hand.”
“I am truly sorry abou
t your boot,” said Emily earnestly.
He watched her expressive little face with some interest. A deep and dark thought had obviously just struck her.
“Perhaps God was punishing you because you were so haughty about my taste in novels,” said Emily slowly. “Pride cometh before a fall, and a haughty heart … How does it go?”
“My dear child, if you are going to go about seeing the hand of the Almighty in every trivial domestic accident, you will end up in Bedlam. You are not a Methodist, I trust?”
“Oh, no, my … Peregrine. We were Nonconformist, Papa says, but Mama said it was not a genteel religion. I should not have told you that,” added Emily miserably. “I feel a great weight on me at the moment, you see, what with you kissing me because you thought I was Mary and no one else being here.”
“You will not be alone much longer,” remarked the earl. “I hear a carriage arriving.”
His servant put a new pair of glossy Hessians on the earl’s feet.
“It is wonderful that your foot was not burned,” said Emily, hoping to put him in a good mood so that Mary would not receive too much of a shock.
But the earl had risen to his feet and was watching the doorway. There was an intensity about him, a stillness, a waiting. Emily felt an odd little pang of envy and wondered if any man would ever wait for her in such a way.
The door opened; Parsons materialized to take cloaks and hats. Mr. and Mrs. Anstey came rushing forward, babbling welcomes, my lords, and apologies.
The earl hardly seemed to hear them. He was looking across their heads to where Mary stood, just inside the door. Mary’s eyes had lit up in welcome, but gradually the glow left her face and she looked wary and frightened.
Then the earl turned slowly and looked at Emily, a little crease between his brows.
“If only he would kiss her as he kissed me,” thought Emily. “If only he would say Mary with that special husky note in his voice.”
But the earl walked forward and formally raised Mary’s hand to his lips.
“I am glad to see you, Mary,” he said. “It has been a long time. “