“The drawing room won’t do, Forbisher. I’ll not stand on ceremony for Landsdowne. Bring him in here.”
“As you wish, my lord.” The butler bowed and departed, reappearing in the doorway a few moments later. “The Duke of Landsdowne,” he announced, rolling it off his tongue with full relish, something Nicholas found rather amusing. Butlers were such snobs.
“Father,” he greeted, as Landsdowne came in. “This is unexpected. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Don’t be coy.” The duke came across the room, leaning heavily on his gold-tipped walking stick as he did so. “You know quite well what has brought me here.”
“As much as I would dearly love to see inside that Machiavellian mind of yours and read what’s there, I can’t. I’m afraid you’ll have to spell it out. I didn’t realize you even remembered the way to Honeywood, much less had any inclination to visit.”
“This isn’t a social call.” Landsdowne eased down in the chair across the desk from him without waiting for it to be offered. “I’ve come on a matter of business.”
“Even more astonishing,” Nicholas murmured, and resumed his seat. “I don’t think you and I have ever discussed a business matter. Other than the matrimonial sort, that is.”
“Do you intend to hold Lady Elizabeth and that Irish chit against me forever?”
He ignored the slight to Kathleen. Given that she’d allowed herself to be bribed, the description seemed appropriate, and even though it came from Landsdowne, it just wasn’t worth fighting about. “No,” he answered. “To be honest, Father, I just don’t care anymore.”
The duke didn’t seem to believe him, but he didn’t care about that much either. Belinda had been right about that; doing the opposite of what Landsdowne wanted was every bit as enslaving as doing his bidding. He was coming to find genuine indifference to Landsdowne’s wishes far less aggravating.
“An alarming report came to me a few days ago from Mr. Burroughs,” the duke said, tapping his walking stick against the carpet beneath his feet for added emphasis. “The moment I read it, I knew a serious mistake had been made, one that had to be dealt with by me.”
“How terrible that my land agent has caused you such inconvenience.”
“On the contrary, he thought he was performing a courtesy. He has informed me that you are refusing to provide any of the autumn grain harvest to Jenkins so that he may brew the beer for the estates. I’m told you are sending the crops straight to market for sale.”
“You’ve been misinformed.”
“Ah.”
He waited until the duke had eased back in the chair and relaxed a bit before he finished. “The crops have already been sold,” he added, and couldn’t help smiling at the way his father jerked back to ramrod straightness.
“I see.” Landsdowne’s eyes narrowed as he gave Nicholas that icy ducal stare that had intimidated him as a boy and enraged him as a young man. “And where did you get the notion that selling all Honeywood’s crops to someone outside the family is an acceptable practice?”
“Well, they are my crops,” Nicholas pointed out, still smiling.
“Half the yield of which is always sold to me. That’s been a tradition at Honeywood for many years.”
Nicholas gave the other man a look of mock apology. “I’m afraid I don’t set much store by the family traditions, Father. You should know that by now. And any decisions regarding Honeywood nowadays are mine to make. They are not Mr. Burroughs’s, and they are certainly not yours.”
“As if you’ve ever cared about any of the decisions made at Honeywood! You’ve always been quite content to allow Burroughs to deal with managing things here, and he’s done an excellent job.”
“Yes, so he has. But things have changed.” He spread his hands in the best deprecating manner he could manage. “I am resolved to have greater control of my own estate. In light of that, one of the decisions I made was to sell my crop to whoever would provide me the greatest measure of profit. That, dear Father, is not you.”
“This is ridiculous. I am entitled to have the grain at a lower price than market. Honeywood is in the family.”
“I realize the number of things to which you think you are entitled knows no bounds, Father, but, as I’m sure you’re aware, Honeywood is entailed to me through Mama, and separate from any Landsdowne holdings.”
“You are splitting hairs.”
“Regardless, it’s still mine. It is also separate from my trust. Therefore, as I explained to Mr. Burroughs when I arrived and took charge, you have nothing to do with what is done here, including to whom I sell my hops, barley, and wheat.”
“Landsdowne and Honeywood have an arrangement that goes back centuries. Why, part of the reason your mother and I married was to strengthen the relationship between the two estates.”
“How unfortunate for you that her father didn’t see it quite that way. He had the good sense to entail it through her in the marriage settlement, not through you. What a bitter pill that must have been to swallow, to know her father didn’t trust you enough to let you have it as part of the dowry.”
“It wasn’t about trust!” the duke snapped, the first sign Nicholas was getting under his skin.
A couple months ago, he might have enjoyed that. Now, he didn’t have time for it. “Perhaps not,” he said, and gave a shrug. “But the fact remains that I have already sold the crop, so I’m afraid none of it will be available to make beer for you. You’ll have to buy grain elsewhere. Was that all you wanted to discuss?”
The duke regained control of his temper, but Nicholas could see that it took the old boy some effort. “I know what this is really about. It’s revenge.”
“No,” he corrected at once, “it’s business. I know you think the sun rises and sets around you, but in this case, you’d be wrong. My decision has nothing whatsoever to do with you.”
“I don’t believe it. You’re paying me out because I’ve forced you to see sense about matrimony and made you stop prevaricating.”
“A use of force on your part that has proved singularly unsuccessful.”
The old man folded his hands atop the head of his cane in a nauseatingly complacent manner. “That won’t last. You can’t afford not to marry. I’ve seen to that. The only question is who the mother of my grandchildren is going to be. Speaking of which, how is the bride search progressing? Lady Featherstone doesn’t seem to be doing too well at finding you a wife. I confess I’m surprised. I’d have thought some vulgar American nobody would jump at the chance to become a marchioness and someday get her ambitious little hands on a duchess’s coronet. What’s wrong, Trubridge? Can’t sell yourself for a high enough price to pay for your manner of living?”
Nicholas pressed his tongue against his teeth, striving to keep back the cheeky barb that hovered on his lips. There was no point to it. He wouldn’t even enjoy it. “I haven’t had much time to think about marriage lately,” he said after a moment. “As you can see . . .”
He let his voice trail off and gestured to the piles of magazines, newspapers, books, and letters on his desk. “I’m rather preoccupied these days.”
“Hmm.” Landsdowne leaned forward and pulled one of the books off the desk. “Scientific Principles of Brewing,” he read and looked up with a frown. “Why on earth are you studying the subject of beer making? Jenkins knows more about it than any book.”
“Yes, Jenkins and I have discussed it quite a bit.” He didn’t elaborate, reminding himself from long experience that the wisest course with Landsdowne was to say as little as possible on any subject. He shrugged as if beer making was a matter of little consequence. “I’m interested in the subject. Beer making is Honeywood’s main purpose, after all.”
“You’ve never taken a shred of interest in the subject before, or Honeywood, for that matter.”
“That’s not true. I did as a boy. But as I gre
w up, I came to believe there was no point, since you always seemed to find a way to counter anything I did or tried to do.”
“Blaming me for your failures, are you?”
“No. At least,” he amended, “not anymore. The truth is . . .” He paused, considering. The duke would find out before long what he was doing. Hell, he might know already and be toying with him at this moment for some reason of his own. Landsdowne was like that. “The truth is,” he said after a moment, “that I’m buying the grain myself.”
“Buying your own grain? To what purpose?”
He grinned. Leaning forward, he lifted the book from the desk and held it up. Landsdowne stared at him, looking every bit as appalled as he’d expected, and despite all his newfound resolutions, he rather enjoyed that. Old habits died hard. “I’m going to make beer, Father.”
“For . . . for commercial purposes? A Landsdowne engage in trade? In . . . in . . . in commerce? It’s unthinkable.” The duke was spluttering, and his rather gray complexion was turning a purplish hue. “You can’t possibly.”
“Can’t I?” Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, though his mouth still smiled. “Watch me.”
“The future Duke of Landsdowne a brewer? It’s out of the question. Absolutely out of the question.”
“Really, Landsdowne, it’s quite futile to tell me I cannot embark on an enterprise in which I’m already engaged. But though you have always believed yourself to be God Almighty, there are some things you can’t control. One of those things happens to be me.”
“Always this need to rebel,” Landsdowne muttered. “Bah! You’ll never change.”
Nicholas was gripping the pencil so hard, he was surprised it didn’t snap in his hand. He forced himself to relax his grip. “Best if you give up trying, then,” he advised affably.
They stared at each other for a full ten seconds before the duke smiled, indicating a change in tactics was afoot. “My dear boy,” he murmured, easing back in the chair, “none of this is necessary. You want to play the local squire and manage Honeywood yourself? Well, all right. Nothing wrong with that. It’s yours. Perfectly understandable you’d take an interest. It’s a right and gentlemanly thing to do.”
“Why, thank you, Father. It means so much to me to know you approve.”
The sarcasm beneath the meek words was ignored.
“And if crop prices and land rents are too low to allow you all that a duke’s son should have,” Landsdowne went on, “then that’s all right, too. I can make it right.” He paused, and Nicholas waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“Marry Harriet,” Landsdowne said, “or some other acceptable young lady, and all you could ask for is yours. It’s that simple. It’s always been that simple.”
“Ah, but I’m not asking you for anything,” he pointed out softly. “I haven’t asked you for a single thing since I was twenty years old, and that just sticks in your craw, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“When I was eight, I asked you not to sack Nana. I begged you,” he added, as Landsdowne made a dismissive sound between his teeth. “And I remember quite well how that turned out. I asked you to allow me to attend Cambridge. I asked you for your blessing when I wanted to marry Kathleen. So many times I’ve asked and been denied for no reason other than what I wanted interfered with your plans for me. After Kathleen, I vowed never to ask again. You enjoy dangling people in uncertainty, waiting for them to ask you for help, naming your price when they do, or taking pleasure in refusing them. I won’t play that game with you. I won’t ask. Not ever again.”
The duke didn’t respond with anger. In fact, his expression softened to a patronizing sort of fatherliness. “Yes, you will, my son.” The tip of the duke’s cane hit the floor, and he rose slowly to his feet. “One day, you will.”
Nicholas stood up, and as he watched his father walk out of his study, he felt the old resentment still there, still lurking inside him. He might never be rid of it. All very well to want to turn over a new leaf, and an easy thing to talk about, but he was beginning to appreciate how hard a thing it was to do.
Chapter 18
Belinda read through Nicholas’s latest letter for the fifth time, and though she was familiar with every word of it by now, it still made her smile. He had a talent for letters, for he wrote as he spoke, dashing off sentences with an ease and naturalness that made even the most ordinary things amusing.
He told her of the hops fields and the barley, of the servants and the house. He reiterated his opinion that the place was a monstrosity—or, as he put it in his letter, “the love child of the baroque and the bazaar.” She wondered if he’d misspelled the latter word, until he described the copper ornaments and carved-stone figures from Persia that adorned the drawing room, along with gilt-framed pastoral landscapes and brocade pillows, and she knew he’d meant just what he said. Still, despite his derision, she perceived behind the glib words a deep affection for the place, one that even he was perhaps unaware of.
He never asked if she was coming down to Kent, and she was grateful for that, for she honestly wouldn’t have known what to answer.
She was procrastinating, telling herself over and over that she simply couldn’t leave London at the height of the season. It was a valid enough reason, but she couldn’t seem to convince herself, for another equally persistent part of her kept thinking of ways to rearrange her schedule.
Her heart and her body wanted to go to him. Ever since he’d issued the invitation that afternoon at the brewery in Chelsea, she’d yearned to take him up on it. Fear was what stopped her.
Belinda had never thought of herself as a coward, but an illicit affair did make her afraid. She believed in the rightness of her profession, and she wasn’t sure she dared risk losing it to a love affair. Nicholas had professed no deeper attachment than desire, and if he did, what would she do? If he asked her to marry him, what would she say? She couldn’t imagine being married again, for if it proved a mistake, there was no way out. Would it be a mistake?
She thought of him, of his dark gold hair and warm hazel eyes, of the way he made her laugh and the way she felt in his arms, and of the longing of her body when he touched her, and her heart said no, it wouldn’t be a mistake. But her head said otherwise, and that was why she stayed in London, procrastinating.
She understood him better now than she had when he’d first walked through her drawing-room door nearly three months ago, she liked him better, and she wanted him more than she’d ever have dreamed possible, but was that worth risking the life she had made for herself?
She had the flesh-and-blood desires of any woman. Was it wrong to act on them, just once in her life? Was it wrong to make love with a man, sleep with him, and wake up in his arms without the blessings and security of matrimony?
Belinda tossed aside his latest letter and leaned back in her chair. She’d gone over these considerations again and again during the past few weeks, her thoughts spinning in pointless circles, with no satisfactory answer.
What did she want? For perhaps the hundredth time since he left, those heated moments in Chelsea came back to her, when the mere touch of his hand had brought her to climax, and like every other time she recalled the incident, her body burned to feel those sensations again. It had been so long ago and so rare to occur, she’d forgotten how that sort of satisfaction felt. Now, after that small taste of what she’d been missing, she couldn’t seem to think about anything else for more than two minutes at a time.
Closing her eyes, she traced her fingertips against her skin above her collar, caressing her own throat and imagining it was his touch instead of her own. Just that tiny moment of fantasy, and her body responded. Her pulses quickened with excitement, and warmth began flooding through her body.
“My lady?”
Belinda jerked upright in her chair at the sound of her butler’s voice,
but she could not compose herself enough to turn around. “Yes, Jervis?” she asked, reaching for another letter on her pile of correspondence. “What is it?”
“Mrs. Buchanan and her daughter have come to call. Are you at home?”
Belinda breathed a sigh of relief at the timely distraction. “Yes, of course. I asked them to call today. Send them up.”
By the time Mrs. Matthew Buchanan and her daughter reached the drawing room, Belinda was in sufficient command of herself to receive them.
Mrs. Buchanan, though rather stout now, her auburn hair streaked with gray, had once been a great beauty, beautiful enough to capture the heart of Britain’s richest coal supplier though she herself had been born a farmer’s daughter. A widow now, and still extremely rich, with a home in Berkeley Square and a fine house in Newcastle, she had become socially ambitious, ambitious enough to want the acceptance of higher society for herself and for her daughter. It was Belinda’s job to make that happen.
On the surface, it hadn’t seemed a difficult business, for May was every bit as beautiful as her mother had been, with the same striking coloring, and her dowry was enormous. But it was proving far harder to find a husband for May than it had seemed at first. Though charming in most aspects, when it came to a consideration of the various gentlemen of London, May seemed impossible to satisfy. Belinda had requested this visit to find out why.
“Ladies, would you care for tea?” she asked after greetings had been exchanged.
“Tea would be a grand idea,” Mrs. Buchanan said as she sat down on Belinda’s settee, and in her voice was a hint of acidity that told Belinda this was not going to be an easy visit. “It might give you enough time, Lady Featherstone, to talk some sense into this hardheaded, rebellious daughter of mine.”
May gave a heavy, exasperated sigh and crossed to the opposite end of the room from her mother, turned her back, and pretended vast interest in the view below. She said nothing.
American Heiress [1]When The Marquess Met His Match Page 23