A Reluctant Courtship

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Nothing changed his foreignness.

  Throughout the service, she watched him from the corner of her eye. He sang the psalm responses with too much heartfelt pleasure in the music glowing on his face. He leaned forward, his face intent during the sermon, as though he actually listened to the vicar’s words. He even nodded a few times, as though agreeing with a point Honore did not even remember half a minute after Mr. Stanbury made it.

  What was the new Lord Ashmoor, some sort of dissenter? Or did he simply take his faith deeply to heart like her sisters and their husbands did?

  Honore squirmed on the hard wood of the pew. She had done that not so long ago—believed she need only trust God to guide her life, to cleanse her heart, to love her. She had even attempted to make her relationship with the Lord personal. Then her second beau proved to be a murderer, and Papa died. Abandoned despite the proximity of her loving sisters, Honore gave up on believing God cared much about her.

  “Be strong and of a good courage,” Mr. Stanbury read from his Bible again, then he glanced at the congregation, at Honore specifically. “You are not alone. God promised to never forsake us, and His promises are true.”

  Honore bowed her head as though she acknowledged his words. In truth, she avoided his gaze in the event he read the doubt of her heart reflected in her face.

  Not at all desirous of a cold collation at the vicarage, Honore rose for the benediction and then moved into the aisle. Perhaps she could plead a headache. It was not untrue. Her shoulders ached enough to set up a pounding at the back of her head.

  “I think I escort you out too, Miss Bainbridge.” Lord Ashmoor held out his arm to her.

  Unable to refuse without embarrassing both of them, Honore took it and pasted a smile on her face as they retraced their steps down the aisle between the rows of the congregation. Outside, a blast of cold, damp wind buffeted their faces and brought a layer of cloud to haze over the earlier sunshine.

  “Rain’s coming,” Ashmoor said quite unnecessarily, “which means we are to proceed to the vicarage, according to Miss Stanbury.”

  “That seems a bit odd if they won’t be there.” Honore stared at the street too narrow and steep for a carriage. “Perhaps I should simply go on home. Walking these streets in the rain is unpleasant at best.”

  “Please don’t.” His voice held genuine appeal.

  Honore glanced up at him. “My lord?”

  “Miss Stanbury scares me.”

  The organ music swelled out the doors of the church. Miss Stanbury, fifteen years older than and half again the size of her brother, was strong enough to crank the old organ into a volume high enough to drown out conversation within a hundred feet. She also played the pianoforte extremely well, cooked wonderfully, and knit mittens and caps for every child in the village each winter. She talked as loudly as she played and talked about whatever she liked.

  “Are you her latest project?” Honore asked.

  “I’m afraid I am.” With Miss Morrow and the other two men in the Ashmoor party behind them, Ashmoor headed down a side street to the vicarage. “She insists she will prove to the parish that I am above speculation as to my loyalty to the Crown, that I deserve the title, and that I am an asset to the entire county, despite three months in an English prison upon my setting foot on these shores, and several visits from various branches of the military.”

  Honore halted in the middle of the lane. “What visits from the military?”

  “Big brother is a suspicious character, Miss Bainbridge,” Mr. Poole called out. “You’re best off letting me escort you about.”

  “Stubble it,” Ashmoor shot over his shoulder.

  “What military?” Honore demanded. “Why?” She removed her hand from his arm and crossed it over her waist.

  “The excise men, the horse guards, a gentleman who didn’t say where he served.” Ashmoor’s face sobered. “Mind you, I use the term gentleman loosely. I’ve lived here long enough to learn that his accent was not up to snuff, even if his clothes met my valet’s approval.”

  “Of course a man’s accent matters more than dress.”

  His, for example, named him as a foreigner, regardless of his aristocratic English parentage.

  “But that does not answer the why,” Honore concluded.

  Ashmoor shrugged and continued to walk.

  She needed to either catch up with him or fall back and take Mr. Poole’s arm instead.

  She matched her pace with his but kept her hands at her waist. “They do not go visiting peers of the realm without good reason, my lord.”

  “They accused me of helping some Frenchmen escape from Dartmoor.”

  Honore gave him a blank look. “Why would you help Frenchmen?”

  “An excellent question, madam.” Ashmoor slipped his hand beneath her elbow to assist her over the ditch at the side of the lane and into the vicarage garden. “A pity I don’t have an excellent answer.”

  “Now, if they accused you of helping Americans escape, I would understand that.” Honore twirled her reticule strings between her fingers. “But then, perhaps you would not risk all for the sake of a few men who will likely be recaptured anyway.”

  “Besides trying to feed this insatiable whelp here,” Ashmoor said with a glance back at his brother, “I have three more brothers at home, all of whom need to get a trade so they can survive in this world, and three sisters, two of whom would also like to marry one day and take something more than their pretty faces to the union. So, Miss Bainbridge, yes, I would not risk all of this for the sake of a handful of Americans who know the risk of going to sea against Great Britain.”

  “Bravo.” Mr. Poole applauded.

  “You have seven brothers and sisters?” Honore stared at him.

  Mr. Poole laughed. “You make a fine speech, and she is in awe over the abundance of our family.”

  The front door of the vicarage opened to reveal a middle-aged maid with a decided mustache on her upper lip. “Do come in, Miss Bainbridge, my lord. The vicar and Miss Stanbury will be along shortly.”

  She led the way into the house. The rest of them followed the bobbing bow of her apron into a parlor smelling of beeswax and the coal of the fire on the hearth. Though she was not cold, Honore headed for that fire as an excuse not to sit. Experience warned her not to repose on one of the sofas or chairs in the chamber. She preferred sitting on rocks. They were more comfortable than whatever filled the cushions of the vicarage furniture.

  “The chairs,” she warned Ashmoor, “are character building.”

  “More like callous building.” Mr. Poole hopped up from the edge of a sofa.

  Miss Morrow and Mr. Chilcott said nothing, though they had talked all the way from the church. They took seats across from one another.

  “I will bring tea momentarily.” Her upper lip stiff enough to make the fine hairs of her mustache quiver, the maid stalked from the parlor.

  “Curb your tongue before servants,” Ashmoor admonished his brother.

  “I forget they’re there.” Mr. Poole placed his hands over his reddened ears. “Just not used to them, you know.”

  “I’d rather they weren’t.” Ashmoor leaned his elbow on the mantel and smiled down at Honore. “Thank you for believing me incapable of being a traitor. That makes one family in the county.”

  “Two,” Mr. Poole said. “The Devenishes wouldn’t believe it if they saw you personally leading escaped prisoners through the village.”

  “Now that they married off their eldest girl, they have another daughter of marriageable age.” Honore grinned as she began to tug off her gloves. “Nearly two if you want to wait a year, Mr. Poole.”

  He shuddered. “No thank you. I mean, they’re pretty enough, but those noises they make instead of laughing are enough to put me off my feed.”

  “Which is saying something,” Ashmoor murmured. Aloud he asked, “How will we endure them for an evening tomorrow, Miss Bainbridge?”

  Honore paused with one glove halfway off her h
and. “Did they invite you to supper? Not a good sign.”

  “Not supper.” Ashmoor glanced at his brother, then Miss Morrow, before his gaze settled on Honore. “It’s some sort of evening gathering. A soirée, I think the invitation said. But surely you’re coming too.”

  “No. No, I am not. I was not invited to the Devenishes’ soirée,” Honore said. The lump that had been pressing on her rib cage all morning suddenly rose into her throat. She swung toward the door. “I must be going. I have—I have a great deal of writing to accomplish this afternoon.”

  She would not weep in front of Ashmoor again, not over the lack of an invitation to a party she would not enjoy anyway. Miss Devenish was lovely, sweet, and kind, but her sisters were insipid and her friends too often mean. Still . . .

  “Forgive me.” She dropped a curtsy then exited the parlor.

  Miss Morrow caught up with her before the front door. “You cannot leave, Miss Bainbridge. It would be the height of rudeness to the vicar and his sister, and you cannot afford to offend anyone else in the county.”

  “I believe I offend them with my very presence.” Honore spoke through teeth clenched to keep her chin from quivering.

  “Not the vicar.” Miss Morrow tucked a curl back into Honore’s chignon, a motherly gesture. “Come back and sit. The gentlemen—the Poole gentlemen—are comme il faut.”

  Honore sighed. “And the Stanburys are coming.”

  Miss Stanbury’s voice rang from out front. By the time she and her brother entered the house, Honore had returned to sit in a torturously uncomfortable chair, Ashmoor was examining a Bible that appeared old enough to have been printed by Tyndale himself, and the others sat in stiff silence.

  “What? No tea yet?” Miss Stanbury greeted them all. “I will see what that woman is doing to take so long.” She stomped off through the house.

  The vicar entered and told them the story of the Bible coming into his family two hundred years earlier. “It was one of the first ones printed under King James.”

  The others smiled politely.

  Tea arrived along with the promised cold collation. Talk focused on nothing more important than the Christmas fete, three months off but needing a great deal of planning, and apparently the true reason for the invitation.

  “We need a place to hold it that will accommodate a number of people,” Miss Stanbury pronounced. “I was thinking that cottage of yours would work well, Lord Ashmoor, it being here in the village but having a fine garden.”

  “If you call a single tree a fine garden.” Ashmoor spoke only loud enough for Honore’s ears.

  “She means your yard,” Honore murmured back. “The yard of that house is a goodly size and walled to protect from the elements.”

  Ashmoor nodded. “I expect that will be all right.”

  “But we need a female’s involvement.” The vicar took up the planning. “And Miss Bainbridge is—”

  “Not acceptable,” Honore broke in. “If—if I am not being invited to parties . . .” That lump had arisen in her throat again. She swallowed. It stuck. She could not finish saying that she could not help with the fete if no one would invite her to their entertainments.

  “But you are the highest-ranked lady in the parish.” The vicar sounded as distraught as he looked.

  Honore shook her head. She still could not speak. More afraid of making a fool of herself by weeping in front of everyone than offending them, she muttered an incoherent excuse and fled from the parlor, fled from the house.

  She had not noticed the rain beginning. It poured from the sky like someone emptying a barrel of day-old wash water all dingy-gray and cold. Muddy water sluiced in twin rivers down the gutters of the street on their way to the sea. Not only had she forgotten to carry an umbrella, but her dainty slippers would be ruined in moments.

  “Allow me, Miss Bainbridge.” Ashmoor stepped out of the vicarage and opened an umbrella large enough to house a small family. “If you hold the umbrella, I’ll lift you over the gutter.”

  “Really, my lord, you cannot continue to pick me up.”

  “I can as long as necessary.” He thrust the handle of the umbrella into her hand. “Up you go.” He scooped her into his arms as he had on Friday, as though she weighed nothing.

  As she had done on Friday, she held herself stiffly, though she wanted to rest her head on his shoulder. She wanted to cling to him because he was so solid, so strong, so . . . warm.

  Perhaps that was wrong thinking despite its truth. She would write Lydia and ask. Lydia always knew what was right and wrong, unlike the two younger Bainbridge sisters. Honore especially. She had behaved so badly she could not get an invitation to a local soirée arranged by people only a generation out of the shop.

  “I’ll take you to your carriage,” Ashmoor offered. “It’s too wet for you to walk.”

  “But Miss Morrow.” It was the best protest she could manage.

  Ashmoor grinned. “Mr. Chilcott will get her there.”

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Chilcott.” Honore’s desire to weep left with the appearance of his smile. “It would be a good match for her.”

  “Do, please, explain this social intricacy. I thought a companion would outrank a steward. And she’s related to an earl.”

  “Chilcott is related to a duke. His great-uncle, I think. And Miss Morrow’s connection to my brother-in-law is quite distant. A cousin several times removed.”

  “I suppose I have distant cousins like that.” Ashmoor puffed a little on the uphill climb. “Am I expected to find them positions if they need them? Chilcott says not, but you might know better. Isn’t there something like noblesse oblige?”

  “Noble obligation? Yes. The Royal College of Arms can help you find your cousins if you like, but if they have not contacted you by now, I doubt they want favors from you.”

  “Offended that I inherited?”

  Honore shifted her gaze to the rain pouring off the umbrella like a waterfall circling around them. “You are not quite English.”

  “Nor am I quite American.” They reached the mews at the top of the main street, and Ashmoor set her down in the shelter of the carriage house. “Will you be all right here while I see that your horses are put to?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She shook off the umbrella and handed it to him. “You will need this.”

  He took it but hesitated in the doorway, raindrops bouncing off the lintel to land on his hair. It curled in the damp, giving him a boyish look for all his size. Nothing about his expression was boyish. The corners of his lips tightened, and lines showed at the corners of his eyes. “Miss Bainbridge, I am sorry you weren’t invited to the Devenish soirée. It doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “Carolina Devenish is a nice country girl.”

  Let him work out that Honore meant Miss Devenish was innocent and naive and must not be corrupted by the scandalous Miss Honore Bainbridge.

  She smiled. “I shall have far more pleasure working at home, you will see.”

  “Working?” He raised one brow, a trick Honore had never been able to master. “On what are you working?”

  “I am writing a Gothic novel full of adventure.” Her smile broadened. “I am considering having my heroine nearly fall off a breaking cliff, only have the murderous villain rescue her instead of—” Realizing what she was about to say, she stepped farther into the carriage house. “You are getting wet standing there. Perhaps you should go.”

  “Maybe I should.” His mouth flattened into a thin line as he turned on his heel and stalked through the rain to the stable without putting up the umbrella.

  Not until she’d spoken those words did Honore remember that many considered his father a villain, a man wanted for the murder of an excise officer twenty-eight years earlier.

  6

  Meric seated himself as far from the pianoforte and other instruments as he could manage. Music played by skilled musicians thrilled his soul. Music played by rank amateurs grated on his ears like two pieces of tin rubbing together. With the
three Devenish daughters and two of their friends swarming around the instruments, smoothing music upon stands, and rearranging chairs—all action accompanied by those delicate titters and little squeals—the fate of his ears for the evening seemed assured.

  “If I’d known this was a musical evening,” he muttered to Philo, “I would have brought some wax to stuff my ears.”

  “I can pinch a candle,” Philo said.

  “The offer is tempting.”

  Someone catching the earl of Ashmoor stealing candles from one of the wall sconces in order to stuff wax into his ears just might give this dull evening the spark it needed to make it interesting. So far, since he didn’t play cards, he had enjoyed nothing more entertaining than a glass of fresh lemonade and no conversation livelier than a discussion of hunting deer. Lemonade was still a novelty to him, as his family had never possessed the resources to afford such luxuries. Hunting in England, however, was downright ridiculous, closer to shooting cattle in a pasture than stalking a wild animal through the woods. And although the English seemed to enjoy their venison, they didn’t depend on it dried and cured to get through the winter without starving.

  Mrs. Devenish apparently thought they should get through the evening by starving. Her refreshments had consisted of cakes no bigger than his thumb and as substantial as a handful of sea foam, and a rather good but sparsely supplied apple pie. Apple tart, she called it, complete with an edging of cream.

  Beside him in the drawing room, cleared to accommodate the guests who didn’t play cards, Philo’s stomach growled like the roll of a bass drum. “Why do we have to eat supper after this gathering?”

  “Because Wooland says so.” Meric raised his gaze to the ceiling, knowing what was coming.