Valor's Reward

by Jean R. Ewing

  Jessica had almost begun to believe she’d misjudged him, though she had been outgunned and outwitted, and had capitulated to his plans for herself with hardly any fight at all. Was Lord Steal as willing a victim?

  “Good heavens, Lord Deyncourt!” she said, lying back on the pillows. “Is everyone’s life to be arranged to suit your convenience?”

  “No, Miss Whinburn,” he replied softly. “Not everyone’s. Only yours.”

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  Jessica dressed the next morning in her gray sarcenet and limped to the fire to await breakfast. It was not Dover, however, who came in with the tray, but Peter, Lord Steal. His bright blue coat lit up the room.

  “Are you feeling more the thing, Miss Whinburn?” he whispered, his eyes full of concern. “I can’t stay. Deyncourt would flay me alive if he knew I’d stolen in here like this, but I had to see how you did.”

  “Then I am much better for your visit,” Jessica said. “Do you go in such fear of your guardian that you must creep about and whisper in your own house?”

  “Oh, Deyncourt’s a dreadful stickler! At least as far as my behavior goes. It’s a pretty rum go having him control all my affairs, I can tell you. He thinks I’m going to turn out like Father, who was a famous gambler.”

  “So was mine,” Jessica said gravely. “So I empathize.”

  “Do you?” Steal’s brown eyes were locked on her face. “You’re most kind to say so. But at least you don’t have Deyncourt to answer to. I have to get back to London, but I don’t even know if he’ll let me go up for the rest of the Season.”

  “Why on earth not? It would be monstrous to force you to rusticate in the country if you didn’t care to. Anyway, how can he stop you?”

  “Good Lord, any number of ways! He could cut off my allowance for a start.”

  “He wouldn’t dare. It would make him appear badly before his friends if he did so.”

  “You don’t know him, Miss Whinburn. He don’t care a fig for anyone’s opinion. Besides, I would rather stand in a cage full of Bengal tigers than face him down.”

  “I won’t believe it, Lord Steal.”

  “That’s because you’re a sweet-natured female. He has a devilish temper, you know. But he don’t rant and rave. A fellow could cope with that, I think. It’s more a kind of killing frost. I can’t stand it, anyhow.”

  Jessica didn’t want to criticize the poor fellow for his lack of backbone, and had she not also capitulated to the earl’s plans?

  So she merely said, “Well, I shan’t tell him that you came to inquire after me, so you’re quite safe.”

  “Thanks, Miss Whinburn. What a monstrous thing to happen to a tender lady—to be attacked on the highway! You were fainting from the horror of it when you arrived. And I suppose it’s very shocking to your sensibilities for you to have a gentleman in your room like this. I’m terribly sorry.”

  His face scarlet, Peter bowed himself out.

  Jessica stared thoughtfully at the fire for a moment. Young Lord Steal was seriously afraid of something. A glaze of anxiety overlay everything in his manner. Was he really so terrified of his guardian?

  After all, the earl intended to force a match with this Miss Caroline Brandon, confident that Peter could offer no resistance. It was outrageous.

  Jessica was not sure if she was glad or sorry when Lord Deyncourt did not come back to his room. Once again that evening she donned his nightshirt and slipped into his bed. So her fate was sealed for exactly one month, but after that—

  * * *

  Someone was giving her an insistent shaking.

  The earl sat casually on the edge of the bed.

  “It is morning,” he said simply. “Pray, dress yourself. Dover has brought breakfast. We are to go gallivanting about the lanes. Regrettably, I shall first have to carry you into the garden.”

  Jessica pulled on the dressing gown and hobbled behind the screen to dress. She brushed through her hateful hair and bundled it into a knot, knowing that it would follow its usual wayward habits and end up looking like a bird’s nest.

  With the aid of the cane she stepped into the room. Deyncourt poured her a cup of hot chocolate, and she sipped at it while he buried himself in his newspaper.

  She watched his long fingers as he folded the paper—hands full of strength and grace.

  They didn’t seem to be the hands of a bully.

  He carried her outside and within a few minutes set her down in a small stone building. It was a folly: a small replica of a Greek temple, built with great pride by some previous Lord Steal.

  “There’s no fire in here, I’m afraid. But Dover has provided hot bricks. As soon as I can respectably leave the house with a curricle, I shall come to fetch you, and we shall duly drive about until we can be expected to have returned from Bedford.”

  “You always have everything planned, don’t you, Lord Deyncourt?” Jessica sat down on the stone seat. “I gave you my word. I shall be waiting here, as quiet as a lamb.”

  “I imagine you will, since you cannot walk. In the meantime, here is your luggage.”

  “This box?” she asked in surprise. A respectable trunk sat on the floor.

  “You can hardly arrive at Tresham carrying your battered leather bags with their diminished contents, can you? You’re supposed to have been traveling like a lady. And since it would raise eyebrows among the maids if I were to continue to lend you a nightshirt, I have taken the liberty of rectifying the situation.”

  She looked up at him, but he laughed and left her.

  Jessica opened the box. Her dresses and other belongings had been carefully packed inside. But at the bottom lay something which slithered sensuously through her fingers.

  She held it up in the dim dawn light. It was a nightdress.

  The garment was modest, cut high to the neck, with long sleeves and a hem that would sweep the floor, but the fabric was the finest she had ever seen. The silk rustled seductively as she laid it back in the box.

  The gift undoubtedly meant nothing to Deyncourt. Yet with a sudden rush of shame, Jessica blushed scarlet.

  * * *

  They met no one as they bowled along the damp lanes. Sodden sheep looked up disconsolately as they passed. Jessica could feel little beads of water forming on her hair and cheeks and the end of her nose. She brushed them off.

  “Why does Lord Steal hold you in such fear?” she asked.

  “Good God! For what reason do you suppose that he does?”

  “Because you appear so confident that you can order him to marry where you like. Is it your reaction to Lord Liverpool’s request, to bully your ward into matrimony, also?”

  He seemed merely amused. “I cannot see that it is any business of yours, Miss Whinburn, whether I chose to act the tyrant to my ward or not.”

  “Then you don’t deny that you would force him into a marriage where he has not the slightest inclination?”

  “Force is a strong word.”

  “Why can’t Lord Steal wed where he likes?”

  “Because of his father’s will he cannot marry without my consent. Of course, when that was written it was my late brother, not I, whom the late Lord Steal had in mind. Yet the guardianship fell to me along with everything else. It’s a charming arrangement, don’t you think?”

  “Yet I should like to see what you could do about it, if he did not agree to marry where you direct. Suppose he should fall in love with someone other than this Miss Brandon?”

  “Do you think if Peter fancied himself in love, I should change my mind?”

  “Obviously you would not. You would make him marry for a fortune, even if his affections were engaged elsewhere. You show no scruples at all.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re a romantic, Miss Whinburn. When you yourself plan never to marry?”

  There was only the slightest hesitation in her reply. “Because I am so situated. I have no dowry, for a start.”

  “Tell me the real reason.”

  �
�Very well,” she said. “I intend to write. It would be impossible to achieve my goals with a husband and children hanging at my skirts. Will that do?”

  “If it is the truth,” he said.

  Jessica turned her head away so that he couldn’t see her face.

  The truth! She had not lied to him, but such a partial truth was hardly honest.

  * * *

  Lady Steal’s smile was charming, if a little absentminded, as she exclaimed over her guest’s sore ankle.

  “I have always said that the steps on those carriages are too treacherous for words. You poor creature! To suffer such an accident!”

  Two footmen carried Jessica into the drawing room, and set her on a couch beside Peter’s mother.

  Lord Steal lounged on the sofa opposite them. His mother wouldn’t have guessed that they had met before, yet Peter’s look was very solicitous.

  The footman brought in the tea tray and set it between Jessica and Lady Steal.

  Jessica waited some time while her hostess fiddled with her handkerchief and looked vaguely anxious.

  Casually Lord Deyncourt rose and came over to them.

  “I really fail to see,” he said with gentle charm, “why it is always a lady who has the honor of pouring tea. May we gentlemen not have a turn?”

  Jessica watched him deftly handle the pot and the dishes. Oh, good heavens! Lady Steal had been waiting for her to fill the cups. She hadn’t known, because they’d never served tea to guests at Whinburn.

  The earl covered the moment with idle conversation, and tea was taken without further incident. At last he rose and gestured to his ward to accompany him.

  “If you will excuse us,” he said, bowing smoothly to Lady Steal. “There is some estate business that needs our attention. Good day, Miss Whinburn.”

  The gentlemen left the room.

  “Does Lord Deyncourt order all your affairs, Lady Steal?” Jessica asked when they had gone.

  “Oh, indeed, Miss Whinburn. He is everything that is kind. I don’t know what we would have done without him after my dear husband died. And now he has become Peter’s guardian, Lord Deyncourt is of untold assistance to us at Tresham. Of course he has his own ideas. All the latest notions, crop rotations, and newfangled machinery. And the earl insists that the tenants’ children attend school. Not at all the thing in my day.”

  “School?” Jessica asked.

  “Oh, indeed, my dear. He’s done the same thing at Castle Deyncourt. He’s quite a radical, you know. I’m very afraid that the children will get ideas above their station, and it is a great vexation to the parents to lose the extra hands on the land. Yet we have a dame school now in every village.”

  Jessica felt a sudden rush of confusion. Why should a careless rake care about rustics’ children?

  “Do his radical ideas reflect badly upon him, then?” she asked.

  “Oh, no, surely not! The earl is generally considered above reproach. He would never do anything to offend even the most delicate sensibility.”

  She almost choked. If Lady Steal had any inkling that her guest had already spent a considerable length of time in that perfect lord’s bedchamber in this very house, she would probably have an attack of the vapors on the spot.

  Deftly, Jessica shifted the conversation to a safer subject.

  * * *

  Lord Steal turned to his guardian as they rode out to inspect the home farm.

  “That was splendidly done, Deyncourt. Miss Whinburn is like the heroine of a romance. Mama suspects nothing.”

  The earl smiled at his young ward. “And neither will she, if you keep your head. I could not help but discern that you never once took your eyes off our new guest.”

  Peter blushed furiously. “Well, her hair color ain’t top of the trees, but she’s so very delicate and has the most tender sensibility.”

  The earl raised an eyebrow at this extraordinary description. “Miss Whinburn is the penniless daughter of an obscure country squire, who has not the slightest idea how to behave in polite society and had enough temerity to travel alone to London. She’s headstrong and obstinate. She’s also—”

  He stopped. What was she? A mystery, surely? Yet with a valiant heart!

  “She also has freckles and a temper. Perhaps you should look more carefully to your own situation.”

  Peter glanced away. “I know. Thanks to Papa’s recklessness, I must marry an heiress. Yet even people in our position in society are beginning to marry for love.”

  Michael’s voice was only a little goading as he quoted gently: “‘Go to; it is a plague / That Cupid will impose for my neglect—’”

  Lord Steal had no patience with Shakespeare. “Anyway, how am I to meet anyone cooped up down here in the country?”

  “If you had minded your manners in town, sir, you might still be there.”

  “All the fellows game and drink.”

  “Yet they don’t usually turned up foxed at Almack’s to demand a dance from the Dowager Countess of Hawksley.”

  Peter began to look petulant. “How could you understand? It was a wager. Yet I don’t suppose you ever stepped out of line, did you?”

  The earl’s horse jibbed a little as if his rider had unexpectedly tightened the rein.

  “Do you think not?” Michael said quietly. “I know a great deal more about folly than you imagine. Yet this discussion concerns your future, Steal, not my past.”

  Peter couldn’t imagine what Lord Deyncourt was talking about. Everyone in town was intimidated by the earl’s unflappable style, though of course he had an enviable reputation with women.

  “I should think even you might concede that a certain amount of compatibility would be desirable in a lifetime mate,” he mumbled at last.

  To his surprise, his remarkable guardian laughed. “Peter, our unusual guest is penniless and she’s a veritable hoyden.”

  “Never!” Lord Steal said, his brown eyes very serious. “She’s all alone. She needs someone to protect her. And she’s as soft, pliable, and complete a lady as . . . as Miss Caroline Brandon.”

  “Then I’m glad to hear that Miss Brandon has attracted your attention.”

  Peter looked astonished. “Who, Caroline? She’s as plain as a mouse. If you hadn’t led her out at the Kale’s ball, she’d have been marked down as a wallflower. Of course, your lead was enough to make all the fellows ask her.”

  “Including yourself, as I remember. I trust you are aware that Miss Brandon is in possession of fifty thousand pounds? Perhaps you might also be interested to learn that I would not object if you were to make her an offer. Marry her, and we need not have any more of these uncomfortable conversations.”

  “If I were to offer for Caroline, might I return to town right away?”

  “Certainly! In fact, I should expect you to cut a dash.”

  “Very well then. I’ll have her.”

  “Will you?” The earl’s voice expressed genuine surprise. “Good God! Then you have just made a very wise decision, sir.”

  The earl touched his horse with his heel and the bay bounded forward.

  It is a splendid, but temporary, thing to be nineteen, he said to himself as they galloped away. But why the devil has he agreed to marry Miss Brandon so quickly? And who is it that he’s this afraid of?

  * * *

  The house party was proposed immediately after dinner that evening. It seemed to be Lady Steal’s idea, but Jessica was sure that Deyncourt was behind it.

  “Let us have Lady Honoria Melton visit us,” Peter’s mother said absently. “Her cousin Cranby will be happy to bring her, no doubt. And perhaps Miss Caroline Brandon may complete the party.”

  Jessica saw an expression of panic cross Peter’s face at this pronouncement. It could only be at the mention of Miss Brandon’s name, surely?

  “And after the visit,” Deyncourt said, idly watching his ward, “it will be time to return to London. With your permission, Lady Steal, I shall see to the arrangements.”

  The ea
rl bowed and left them.

  “Who is Lady Honoria Melton?” Jessica asked.

  “Sir Gordon Cranby’s cousin, you know,” Lady Steal said. “She’s the loveliest thing.”

  “She was the toast of the Season,” Peter added, his face still white. “She’s known as The Incomparable. She’s a raving beauty and Deyncourt plans to marry her.”

  At which, he leapt from his chair and charged from the room.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  April seemed determined to make up for all the storms of March. By the time the guests were due to arrive, Tresham smiled over woods and gardens bright with spring flowers. The earl and Peter had disappeared for two weeks to inspect the farms at Castle Deyncourt.

  Jessica was left at Tresham. She burned with impatience, yet the prospect of eventually being delivered to her great-aunt in London filled her with dread. In the meantime, she could not walk on her ankle at all. She certainly could not travel.

  Since Lady Steal seemed essentially oblivious to her presence, Jessica spent a great deal of time alone in the library. She amused herself by translating Greek epics and using them to create simple stories. Her injured ankle excused her every time she was late for dinner, or unwittingly revealed her appalling ignorance of etiquette. Tresham was run with an exact and efficient correctness that Jessica had never experienced before.

  For there was a great deal about Whinburn House that she had not told Deyncourt.

  Yet the gentlemen returned at last, and they all gathered in the drawing room, waiting for the company to arrive.

  The earl strolled casually over to Jessica.

  “I hope you are managing, Miss Whinburn?” he asked quietly. “And that your arm is entirely mended? It would hardly do for me to visit you in your bedroom now that you are an official guest of Lady Steal.”

  “I am perfectly cognizant of that,” she replied. “I am quite competent to handle my problems by myself. There is no further need for you to concern yourself. Besides, I would have thought you already had your hands full with everybody else’s.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Indeed? What makes you think that I enjoy such a role?”