Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Annie Burrows

  No, what was the point? He knew how she felt about marrying him. She’d made it plain over the last couple of days, by refusing to speak to him. And tonight, by being pleasant to everyone else at the table whilst contriving to act as though he wasn’t even there.

  Where had she gone, that girl whose eyes had roved over his naked body with frank curiosity and what had looked like admiration when he’d waded out of the lake? What had happened to the tender heart that wouldn’t let him sleep out of doors when rain was on the way?

  It had all vanished during that fight when they’d reached shore. When she’d watched her brothers beat him to the ground, over and over again. Or perhaps it had been later, when her father had insisted she marry him.

  He pulled his greatcoat up to his ears. If he could sleep on his study floor, he could easily have slept on the ground at the back of the folly, where he knew there were mounds of soft grass. He could have insisted she go back to the mainland and send a servant back for him but, no...he’d succumbed to the chance to spend time alone with her. To carry on showing off his physique by rowing her to shore, because his damned pride had been puffed up by the way her eyes had roved over his naked torso. He’d wanted her to carry on looking at his muscles and admiring them.

  So all this...disdain that she was sending his way was entirely his own fault. No more than he deserved.

  He tugged his boots, which he was using as a makeshift pillow, into a slightly less uncomfortable position under his ears. If only he had more experience with women. It was all very well her father saying that it was better to come to marriage with a clean slate, but if he had taken up even a few of the opportunities that had come his way over the years, he might have some idea how to begin...well, wooing his wife. Breaking through to her.

  Because of his years soldiering he kept on thinking in terms of laying siege to a citadel, especially after he’d pictured her raising her drawbridge. But he couldn’t just throw up earthworks and place guns on the heights to batter down her defences, could he? Not even in a metaphorical sense. When an army attempted to conquer a castle, or a city, nobody cared all that much about the casualties. At least, it never stopped them from doing what was necessary.

  But he didn’t want to do anything that would hurt Daisy. And barging in and battering down her defences by brute force would most certainly hurt her.

  The other alternative, of crawling to her and begging for her attention was equally repellent to him. He didn’t have the stomach for that sort of grovelling. Only mongrels grovelled. He shivered at the echo of the voice he’d heard speak those very words, in this very room. And his gaze snagged for a moment or two on the riding crop lying on a side table, before swivelling to the shotgun propped against the wall by the double doors that led out to the rear terrace. The shotgun that had belonged to the Fourth Earl and now, he supposed, belonged to him. In spite of everything.

  He rolled onto his side and stared resolutely at the wall. He knew, only too well, that if someone didn’t like you, they just didn’t like you, and it made no difference what you did. After the age of about eight or so he’d stopped bothering trying to get either of his parents to approve of him, let alone show any affection for him. And as for people outside the family circle, well, if they didn’t accept him as he was, he walked away from them.

  Just walked away...

  CHAPTER TEN

  Marguerite slept soundly for the first time since she’d learned she had to marry Ben, and bounced out of bed the next morning, eager to get started on the transformation of Bramhall Park.

  They all ate in the kitchen again, just as they’d done the night before, with about the same amount of awkwardness. She did her best to put the servants at ease, but with Ben and his henchman glowering at everyone, it was an uphill struggle. After a while she began to wish she was sitting next to him, rather than at the far end of the table, so she could have kicked him. Although, looking back on the times he’d stayed at Wattlesham Priory, he’d never been particularly talkative first thing in the morning. Or at any other time of day.

  ‘Will you have time,’ she said to Mrs Green, ‘to show me around the house today?’

  ‘Well, once the breakfast things are done...’ she said, with a frown. ‘I suppose I could take an hour before starting on the midday meal...’

  ‘You won’t get through the half of it in that time,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t mind doing it.’

  He didn’t mind. Not, he would be delighted to spend time with her on their own. No, and if she took him up on his grudging offer, she’d have to put up with him glowering at her, just like he was doing now, the whole time. Well, she wasn’t going to put up with that. Besides, she still wasn’t speaking to him, was she? He hadn’t come to her room again last night. And she hadn’t expected him to, just because his trunk had been there. Not that she’d been disappointed. She hadn’t. But if she had, if she was feeling...insulted and disappointed this morning, it would be rather difficult to convey that frame of mind to him when, if he were the one to show her around the house, she’d have to be continually asking him questions.

  ‘Mrs Green,’ she said, ignoring Ben’s suggestion, ‘I would prefer it if you could spare me the time, since you will have much more idea of what wants doing than His Lordship.’ Or the place would not be in the state it was in.

  Everyone around the table must have heard the rebuke she left unspoken, since all of a sudden everyone except Ben was staring very hard at their plates. Ben leaned back in his chair, his mouth pulling up into one of those cynical smiles he was so good at, as if to say, So that’s the way it is, is it? How childish of you. Which made her itch to throw what was left of her toast at him. She satisfied herself by lifting it to her mouth and devouring it in one bite instead.

  ‘If Mrs Green can spare the time to show you over the place, it will leave me free to see to some pressing business I have,’ said Ben as though her refusal to accept his invitation was of supreme indifference to him. ‘Go and saddle up the horses, Sergeant Wilmot,’ he said curtly to his henchman.

  And as for having pressing business...hah! He was just going to go out for a ride. Probably to the nearest hostelry.

  Well, she didn’t care. Let him go galloping off all over the place. It would have the benefit of getting him out from under her feet. But, goodness, wasn’t she glad she’d eaten that last bit of toast. Or she might well have yielded to the temptation to throw it at the back of his head as he got up and strolled away.

  Once they’d cleared the table, Mrs Green led Marguerite and Marcie up several dusty staircases, so they could begin the tour of the house up in the attics. Marguerite was pleased to discover minimal damage in any of the little rooms that had once probably housed servants, most of which looked as though it was due to birds getting down the chimneys and not being able to get out.

  ‘Do any of the roofs leak?’ If they did, surely the attics would be in a far worse state.

  ‘No, the roof is sound.’

  Well, that was something. ‘So the work that needs doing will be mostly in the form of cleaning,’ said Marguerite, ‘and redecorating, then.’

  Mrs Green gave her a strange look. ‘I had better show you the family rooms before you make any decisions about that,’ she said cryptically, before leading her down one of the flights of stairs they’d just climbed up.

  Every room into which Marguerite ventured on that floor looked as if burglars had ransacked the place. There were bare patches on walls where paintings had once hung, bare boards where there ought to have been carpets, and what furniture was left was of the meaner sort. Ben’s family must have been selling off everything that had any value for years, by the looks of it.

  ‘Now, this,’ said Mrs Green, pausing outside the only door they’d come to so far, which was locked, ‘was Her Ladyship’s room. Where, by rights, you ought to be sleeping, but...well, when you see it you will understand why we didn’
t make any attempt to...’ She petered out, fumbling at her belt for the set of keys that, so far, she hadn’t had to use.

  When she finally got the door open, Marguerite gasped. Far from being devoid of furniture, like all the other rooms she’d been in, this one was cluttered with all kinds of stuff. But all of it was slashed, or smashed, or tossed to the floor.

  ‘Lor lumme,’ cried Marcie, who’d kept a respectful silence so far. ‘It looks as if a madman ran amok with an axe in here!’

  Marguerite couldn’t have described it better herself. The bed curtains hung in tatters from their moorings, at least the ones that hadn’t been wrenched down and left lying on the floor. The coverlet was slashed, the pillows ripped open so that the feathers had drifted all over the place. All the bottles that had once stood on the dressing table had been toppled over, some of them now lying splintered across the floor. The mirror was smashed, and clothes had been wrenched from the armoire, the door of which still stood open. And someone had ripped off sleeves and collars and so forth from many of the gowns before strewing them all over the room.

  ‘His late Lordship did all that,’ said Mrs Green, ‘after Her Ladyship died. Then locked the door and forbade any of us to go in.’

  ‘My...my word,’ said Marguerite, who was standing stock still in the doorway. It was the only room she’d seen so far that she didn’t want to enter and have a good look around. It was too...terrible. So much emotion had been vented in here that to walk into it would have felt like an intrusion on someone’s grief. ‘He must have loved her very much.’

  ‘Loved her?’ Mrs Green looked at her with raised brows. ‘Not by the end he didn’t. And once she’d gone, he spent the rest of his life...’ She pulled in a sharp breath. ‘Well, it’s not my place to say.’

  No, it was for Ben to tell her. Only that would mean going to him and asking him to open up to her. Which he wasn’t likely to do. He’d always been a closed off sort of person, and...besides, she still wasn’t speaking to him, was she? And she wasn’t going to relax her attitude until he’d shown some signs that he thought of her as more than a means to an end. So far, they’d found nowhere in the house that had a bed, apart from the room she’d slept in, which meant that he must have gone out to the stables last night with the male staff, rather than force himself to act like a real husband. Which meant that they all knew that he hadn’t made any attempt to bed her yet. And of course they were all too concerned about keeping their jobs to openly mock her for being still a virgin with a very uninterested husband, but she would know that they knew, and that they probably discussed her when she wasn’t there to hear it.

  And if he didn’t want her that way, then she was blowed if she was going to go...crawling round him, asking him questions about his family, and what had happened in this house, as though she was fascinated by him. Even if she was burning with curiosity. She had too much pride. She wasn’t going to let anyone suspect she cared one jot about his reluctance, she vowed as they went down another flight of stairs to another floor, which Mrs Green said contained the public rooms, and which was in pretty much the same condition as the rest of the house. She’d thought that nothing else could shock her after the mess they’d found in what should have been her bedroom. That was until Mrs Green opened the door to what she called the library.

  Marguerite froze at the sight of all the bare shelves. Then gasped in horror when she caught sight of a pile of books, many with the spines ripped off, in a heap by the fireplace.

  A cold sensation gripped her stomach. He couldn’t have...

  ‘Did Ben’s father...burn books in that fireplace?’

  Mrs Green nodded. ‘As many as he could. He spent many a winter evening in here, drinking his way through what was left of the cellar, ripping up the books and warming his hands by the flames.’

  How could anyone commit such an atrocity? ‘He...he must have been mad!’ No wonder Ben had always been a bit glum, even as a boy. Only imagine having such a father as this. One who went around smashing things and burning books. No wonder he never talked about his home and his family. Who would want to talk about this sort of thing? And no wonder he’d spent so much time at Wattlesham Priory. It must have seemed like heaven to stay with a family who behaved fairly rationally.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ said Mrs Green. ‘There’s no getting round the fact that he behaved a bit odd in his last years. But he knew what he was doing all right,’ she finished darkly. ‘But if you can spare me now, I should like to get back to my kitchen. I can show you round the servants’ hall and the downstairs rooms another time. Dinner won’t make itself.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, you get on,’ said Marguerite, still shaken by the desecration of what looked as if it might have once been a very fine library.

  ‘Lor lumme. No wonder His Lordship is a bit Friday-faced,’ said Marcie, echoing her own thoughts precisely. ‘Being brought up with a lunatic for a father couldn’t have been exactly a lark.’

  No. And the signs of violence, of malice even in the utter destruction of his wife’s room, as well as a perfectly innocent library, made her wonder if he’d ever suffered at the man’s hands. She recalled the way his parents had ignored the letter Mother had sent, informing them when he’d broken his collar bone. The way he’d said he ate his meals in the kitchen...

  Oh, Ben. No wonder he hadn’t made much effort to put his estates to rights. No wonder he’d stayed in London, living the carefree life of a bachelor...since he’d left his regiment, anyway. If she’d had all this...she looked around the library with a shudder of revulsion...at home, she would have stayed in London, drinking and going to balls, and all the rest of it as well.

  It made her want to go to him, and...and comfort him.

  But what would happen if she did? She’d learned her lesson after the summer of the broken collar bone. He might tolerate her efforts, while he had no other company, but the moment he was up and on his feet again he’d taken great pains to stay well away from her. He wouldn’t want her to show him any sympathy. Any more than she would want someone to commiserate with her over her continued virginal state. It was too intrusive to anyone with an ounce of pride. And Ben, she suddenly perceived, had far more than an ounce. He fairly bristled with it sometimes.

  Well, that made two of them. And she had no intention of letting him rebuff any overtures of sympathy she might make. It was up to him to make the first move.

  * * *

  Given Vale’s attitude the night before, Ben would have thought he’d take to his heels at the first opportunity. So he was very surprised, after the coach Lord Darwen had lent them to make their trip here departed, to discover the footman with his shirt sleeves rolled up, a bucket of water at his feet, energetically cleaning the kitchen windows.

  ‘Not leaving us, then, Vale?’

  The footman turned. ‘Not while Her Ladyship needs me,’ he said, wringing water from the rag dripping in his hands.

  ‘You think she needs you?’

  ‘A lady like her needs a manservant to protect her at all times,’ he said a bit mulishly. ‘Besides there not being anyone to do the heavy work about the place.’

  At his side, Ben felt Sergeant Wilmot bristle.

  ‘Indoor work, I mean,’ said the footman with a disarming grin. ‘But just until she’s decided what she wants doing, I thought I might as well make a start on the windows.’

  Ben nodded. ‘I am sure she’ll be pleased you chose to stay.’

  ‘Her maid, too, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Wilmot, making the footman’s face turn an interesting shade of pink. Ah. Ben had noticed that Vale and Marcie seemed to alternate between looking at each other more than was entirely necessary and trying to avoid each other. When they did have to converse, they did so in extremely formal tones and with very flushed faces.

  He hoped the footman had more success with his courtship of the maid than he was having with
her mistress. He probably would. Vale was tall, and good looking, and had that disarming grin. And smooth manners. He probably had women sighing after him wherever he went. He... No, it wasn’t fair to resent the footman for his success with women. It wasn’t visions of his ultimate success with Marcie that was making him jealous, anyway. It was the fact that he was certain that Daisy would be pleased to have the footman around. When she’d made it so clear that she didn’t want her own husband anywhere near her.

  He trudged through the rest of his duties that day. Though his mood grew increasingly black over the next few. The Fourth Earl had created even more of a mess than Ben had suspected. The damage extended not only to the village of Bramley Bythorn but out to the surrounding areas. He’d come here thinking that with Daisy’s dowry, and a lot of hard work, he might be able to restore prosperity to the area. But the more locals he spoke to, the more certain he became that it was going to take something in the nature of a miracle.

  It took him three days spent discovering the extent of the damage the last Lord Bramhall had wrought before he gave up hope. He woke up on the hard floor of his study with a crick in his neck and the cold certainty that today was not going to be any better. Because he just didn’t belong here. He never had. And he never would. The locals looked on him with distrust, not to say suspicion when he tried to talk to them. The servants here all looked to Daisy for their orders. She charmed them. Well, she charmed everyone.

  He was starting to envy Vale and Wilmot their bivouac in the hayloft. While they spent their evenings drinking the ale that Sergeant Wilmot sourced from the one local hostelry remaining, he lay alone in here on a cold, hard floor.

  He didn’t belong with the staff. He wasn’t welcome in his wife’s bed. His wife, who was all sweetness and light with everyone else but who could barely bring herself to speak to him.

  He got up and rolled up his improvised bedding, the way he’d done so many times on campaign, before hiding it in the trunk he’d removed from his wife’s room before she’d had the chance to order him to do so. He might just as well be on campaign, he reflected as he slammed the lid shut, considering the discomfort he was enduring. In fact, if he were on campaign, he would at least have a defined place in his regiment. He’d have duties that nobody else could do. And he’d have companionship. The companionship of his brother officers. And the respect of his men.