by Sophia Nash
The lady’s small mouth V’d into a sly smile. “Actually, I’m thinking frozen beefsteak will be more the thing for some of the party.”
Grace linked arms with the dowager. “Ata, I’ve acquired a new art while waiting out the storm—the art of cooking. I’ve quite taken to it.”
If he hadn’t been so ill at ease, her comments would have provoked a curl to Michael’s lips. As it stood, he was lucky to be able to breathe given the tension in the overcrowded room.
Grace collected a few articles and took her leave, the other lady clucking behind her. With the loud click of the door engaging, Helston paced a circle around him.
“You are on the tall side, Ranier.”
Michael remained silent.
Helston’s scorn was palpable. “Great in stature, but short in honor. But then, one can never count on that when facing a…a…what are you, anyway?”
“Not a tarted-up dandy.”
Helston sighed. “Oh, there was never any doubt of that. Just tell us you’re not the bloody footman or gamekeeper here.”
“I suppose it was too much to hold out hope for a cit, at the very worst,” Ellesmere said, a reasonable under-current in his words.
“So, he speaks.” Michael half-shuttered his eyes.
The Marquis of Ellesmere stepped forward. “What in hell are you inferring?”
“It means that while my attentions toward the Countess of Sheffield were dishonorable in every way imaginable, they did not break her heart. Your original attentions were honorable in every way, I am guessing, but you, my lord, broke her spirit quite recklessly.”
He should have paid closer attention to the dowager’s advice. Helston’s left hook was indeed as vicious as she’d suggested. Michael gripped his hands behind his body, refusing to engage the three men before him. He deserved every bloody fist they sent his way.
“Oh, you’re good,” Helston purred in his ear after several blows. “But if you think playing the stoic pillar will gain you an inch of respect after you’ve admitted to dishonoring her, you’re about to be proven quite, quite wrong. You see, there was something about that uncooperative, cowering boy in your stables which bespoke of hasty lies and secrets.”
Michael took a step forward, colliding into the duke on purpose. “I don’t care if you’re the bloody King of England. If you laid a hand on Timmy Lattimer I shall strangle you with your lacy neckcloth and stuff that ornate quizzing glass down your throat.”
Mr. Brown chuckled. “Now wait a minute, lads. This is pointless. Shouldn’t we be discussing Lady Sheffield’s—”
“Stay out of this if you treasure the last few hairs on your head, old man,” Helston bit out.
“Brown’s correct,” Ellesmere insisted.
“Spoken like a true diplomatic bore,” the duke muttered.
“I know I can always count on you to remind me of my place,” Ellesmere replied dryly, “just as I must remind you that a naval commander’s tactics bear little fruit on dry ground.”
Helston looked like a ship’s cannon, ready to explode. “Do we or do we not want to get to the bottom of this?”
“Of course,” Ellesmere replied. “Mr. Ranier, let us state the facts. We could really care less about what you might be hiding. But you’ve compromised a lady high above your touch when she was at your mercy.”
“I say we flog him,” Helston muttered.
“You have precisely thirty seconds to explain yourself, lad,” Mr. Brown warned.
“I never suggested I had an explanation.”
“Did you or did you not seduce the Countess of Sheffield?” Helston barked. “And if I understand it, she was injured, to boot.” He had completed a new circle and was now standing a fraction of a breath away from him.
Michael’s three-inch advantage in height did little to unnerve the bastard. “I see few advantages to commenting on your theories.”
Helston sent him a look filled with daggers. But under it, Michael was certain he glimpsed a similar expression to the one he’d spotted earlier in the marquis. “Ah, I understand the way of it now. You are the bloke who jilted her the first go-round, aren’t you?”
Mr. Brown and the marquis grabbed the duke’s arms as he fisted his hands.
“Dash it all,” Mr. Brown muttered. “The lad ’as a bloody death wish.”
“At least have the courtesy of telling us if you own this property or are you just a lusty servant after all?”
“I hold the deed to Brynlow.”
The three gentlemen expelled their collective breaths.
“But I am sorry to inform that I have come into this property but lately. Until now, I shod horses and farmed a strip of land.”
Pain of the acutest kind crossed the gentlemen’s faces and Michael’s throat tightened. If he had meant to cause them lifelong regret, he had accomplished it quite effectively.
He had taken advantage of her. A lady who was injured and at his mercy, during a snow storm. He had encouraged her to engage in wicked lust with a stranger.
In an ominous, strangled voice, the duke continued, “And how does a man such as you come to possess property such as this?”
“A will.”
The Marquis of Ellesmere was still stunned by Michael’s pronouncements. “Well, there is that. At least he’s a landowner, if it comes to the point.”
“And why does that signify?” Michael said through tight lips.
“I daresay they’re trying to decide if it wouldna be better for the countess to marry you or if they should go with their first intention to bury you,” Brown said.
“Grace Sheffey has no desire whatsoever to marry me. She told me her intention is to travel to the Isle of Mann.”
A look of relief washed over the gentlemen’s faces.
“You will, of course, offer her marriage before she leaves. As a courtesy,” the Duke of Helston stated.
“And we will do everything in our power to make sure she doesn’t commit the greatest mistake of her life,” Ellesmere continued, “as a courtesy.”
Michael scratched his bristled cheek. “It appears I place a higher value on the countess’s wishes than you. And since there’s the fact that I possess none of your sort’s manners—well, I feel absolutely no compunction to take part in your undemocratic charade.”
Helston’s face blanched. “By God, that’s it. That accent. He’s a murdering traitor to the crown. You are, aren’t you? An ungrateful heathen from the colonies.”
It was the comment that broke Michael’s self-discipline. It was too bad for them that they had not the advice of his cronies in Virginia in advance. It was clear within a few moments that these lords knew little of tactics practiced in London’s finest gutters and Washington’s muddiest ditches. Tactics that included a fury of elbows, knees, and teeth.
“Grace, my darling girl,” Ata murmured, grasping her hand as they sat in the kitchen. “Luc found traces of bloodstains in the wrecked carriage.”
“It was a small cut. There’s no need to worry, Ata.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me, Grace Sheffey.” Ata searched her exposed skin without success.
“Rosamunde and Georgiana, they did not join you?”
“They insisted on leaving Cornwall to see you in town as soon as Georgiana wed Quinn. But we arrived there the day after you left again. We determined to follow you when your servants told us you were gone with Mr. Brown to his home in Scotland. But Rosamunde and Georgiana remained in London for it was too hard on Quinn’s daughter and the infants. The rest of us continued on, only to find ourselves stranded in the most wretched inn when the storm broke. We left yesterday despite the roads and found the wrecked carriage and Mr. Brown soon after.”
“And Sarah and Elizabeth?”
“The other widows are waiting for us at a lovely estate not three or four miles from here—Beaulieu Park. The Duke of Beaufort’s principal seat.” Ata appeared flustered. “A very accommodating gentleman, the duke. Grace, what is that on your neck? You are very red there. Were you
burned? Is there no salve to be found here?”
Grace jumped to the stove and stirred the bubbling porridge. “Nothing. Just an ill effect of the cold I suppose.”
The sound of Ata’s finger tapping the table broke the silence. “Grace, you must tell me. Did he hurt you? I promise I won’t tell Luc or Quinn. He doesn’t look the sort, but then he’s so very intimidating. I must know. I can help you, you see. I know very well what it’s like to have a man—” she interrupted herself. “That is…Oh Grace, I am so, so happy to see you well. But you are altered, or perhaps it is that you are acting differently. I mean, cooking? Where are the servants? Oh, you are blushing…”
“Ata, Mr. Ranier did not ravish me.”
“I see,” the tiny dowager said, not seeing at all. “He’s a very large man.”
“You remarked on that already.”
“But very gentle, I am guessing,” Ata said with a knowing smile.
Grace could not utter a word. Instead she arranged the articles on the table.
“You must marry him. He’s so very dashing and, well, virile. You will make us all so relieved to see you happy.”
“I beg your pardon? I never meant to suggest I would wed Mr. Ranier.”
“Well, in my day, a lady did not engage in an affair with a gentleman without benefit of marriage. Oh, the very bold might anticipate the vows by a week perhaps, but even so…”
“I am sorry I cannot make you and the others happy, Ata.” Grace poured warmed milk into two bowls and pushed forward the honey pot.
Her older friend gazed at her for a long while and then murmured. “Well, I had to try, didn’t I? Had to make it appear romantic. You know, Grace, unlike Luc and Quinn, I don’t care if he is the gamekeeper. If he pleases you, that is all that matters. And no one would have to know. You could sell the townhouse the earl left you in London and purchase property in Cornwall—near all of us, and we’d concoct a history for Mr. Ranier. Oh, it would be perfect. You probably could not really show your face in town, since we both know peers are better at sniffing out a person’s pedigree than hounds on a hunt. But, then, who needs town when—”
“Ata, Mr. Ranier and I agreed from the start. He is single-minded in his desire to work day and night to make this property, this new windfall of his, a fruitful one. And while he would never say it, he does not desire the added worry of a wife or—”
“But men never know what they—” Ata tried to interrupt, without success.
“No. I must finish.” Grace examined her chapped hands. “I chose to take advantage, for a moment in time, of the freedom widowhood allows.”
“It was never allowed in my time,” Ata snorted as she pushed away the cooling milk. “Females were kept under lock and key, I tell you.”
Grace’s stiff smile wavered.
“And what is this business of returning to the Isle of Mann? You can’t be serious,” Ata said, a hint of fear in her expression. “Grace, you should never have tried to brazen it out in town by yourself. Why didn’t you let us help you?”
“I think it should be obvious. Did you really think I would want to ruin Georgiana’s sudden happiness by hovering about as the awkward, cast-off fiancée? Perhaps Georgiana shouldn’t have hidden her great love for Quinn from me, but I understand why she did. Did I not do the exact same thing with Luc for years?”
Ata suddenly looked older than she ever had before in that moment.
“Oh Ata, I am sorry. But I realize now it might have been better if we had spoken about it then instead of my running off to Italy when Luc married Rosamunde. Look, I left Cornwall last month to prove to myself that I could reenter society and refashion a new life all by myself. I wanted to do it alone, but in the end, I just didn’t have the fortitude to do it.” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “The society columns were full of wild speculation and I received not a single invitation after I put my knocker up. And so, I begged Mr. Brown quite shamelessly to take me up in his carriage when he announced he was continuing on to Scotland.”
For once, Ata did not try to interrupt her.
“Again, I tried to run away from disappointment. But I realize now that I’ll never find lasting happiness there. I’m only running away from myself. And I enjoy the vast diversions of life in town. I always have. I like the vibrant excitement of it. And I love to be surrounded by my friends. By you, Ata, most of all.”
“Oh my darling,” Ata uttered, gripping Grace’s hand tightly, tears glinting on her withered cheeks. “I can’t bear what you’ve endured. I think if Luc were not related to me I would have put a pistol ball through his heart last year. And Quinn…but that is too new. My only consolation is knowing they suffer more than you, I assure you.”
“Ata, I am certain you understand that I cannot support everyone’s pity.” Grace returned to the pot to stir the porridge, which she knew neither one of them would eat. “In fact, I pray Mr. Ranier will tell Luc and Quinn the bare truth of the last few days. I am very grateful to Mr. Ranier. I assure you I vastly prefer the role of a scandalous widow bereft of morals rather than a wretched, jilted bride twice over.”
“Grace!”
“Well, it’s true. We both know it.”
“I don’t think the peers of the realm will see it quite that way,” Ata added dryly.
“I know.”
“Well, what are we to do?”
It saddened Grace to see the dowager duchess in such a state. Ata had never, in all her life, not had a plan. She was a force of nature when it concerned her wishes. “I suppose we shall just have to do what will bring all of us the most ill ease and the greatest potential for disaster—return to London.”
“Oh.” A gleam appeared in Ata’s shrewd brown eyes. “And I know just what to do. No one will ever learn of what happened here. You shall give an enormous ball in Quinn and Georgiana’s honor. That will keep the gossip-mongers in check. Do you think we stand a chance of enticing Mr. Ranier to attend? If you dance two waltzes with him, why, he’s so very masculine in that animal-like way that everyone will forget all about that talk regarding you and Quinn.”
Grace closed her eyes. Would she always have to endure such situations? The stark manor on the desolate lands of Mann really did appear much more inviting.
The muffled sounds of Luc, Mr. Brown, and Quinn’s voices and footfalls echoed from the stair, yet the gentlemen did not enter the kitchen. They were hiding something. Luc’s gruff voice called from the door leading to the stables. “Ata…Grace? We’ll see to the carriage. We depart for Beaufort’s at a quarter past the hour. That should be sufficient time for you to collect your affairs, Grace. Ata, you are not to leave her alone with that…that bloody heathen.”
The duke did not wait for an answer. The slam of the door proclaimed to the world what he really wanted to say.
A gleam appeared in Ata’s eyes and it eased Grace as nothing else had. “Insolent puppy. Always was. Always will be.”
Grace smiled. “You love him.”
“Well, how can I not? I sadly recognize my obstinate blood runs thick in his veins. And I have no one else to blame but myself.”
Grace smiled, so happy to see her friend’s humor returned.
“Now go on, child. Don’t be a fool. I don’t need to tell you to ignore my grandson. If you are half the lady I know you to be, you will stop all this nonsense and grab onto that monstrously large man upstairs and compromise him again within an inch of his life.”
“Ata!”
“Oh, botheration. Do you want me to do it for you? I’ve taken a sudden liking to this era’s customs.”
Tears of laughter filled Grace’s eyes. “Enough!”
Ata leaned in close to confide in her. “You know, I’ve never told anyone but I actually tried to do something similar fifty years ago, although it was perhaps not quite so bold. Unfortunately, the man I chose was too hen-hearted to go through with it.”
Poor Mr. Brown.
A creak from above stairs interrupted and they bot
h glanced up. Ata grasped Grace’s shoulder. “Go to him. I could see he cares for you, Grace. You’ve nothing to fear.”
“I never said I was afraid of him, Ata. In fact, he might just be the only man I don’t fear.”
Grace moved the porridge pot from the fire and left before Ata could say another word. She knocked on his chamber door once and didn’t bother to wait for a response.
He was standing before the fire, his hands on his hips. When he did not turn to face her, she began. “I’ve come to take my leave. And to thank you. Thank you for rescuing me and for, well…everything else. I’m only sorry my friends did not understand the enormity of how much I am in your debt.” He still refused to turn around, and his silence made it very awkward. “And I also wanted to inform that I’ve decided to return to London after all. I was a fool to think I’d find happiness on Mann. Everyone knows the home of your childhood never turns out to be the way you remember it.”
“Actually, sweetheart, sometimes it’s exactly as you remember it.” He slowly swung around and she rushed to him.
“Oh, you’re bleeding.” She felt for the handkerchief in her pocket and reached for his face.
“Stop. It’s naught but a scratch.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Here, let me—”
He caught her wrist in midair. “Don’t, angel.”
So they were back to the impressive list of impersonal names he used to address her. Well, perhaps it was better that way since it was good-bye.
“It’s nothing,” he continued, “and we’ve more pressing things to discuss.” His face was tight and very white and it didn’t appear to be due to the cut on his chin.
“Mr. Ranier, if you offer a single word about marriage, I shall not forgive you.” She forced levity into it. “I might even prepare your dinner for a month as revenge.”
Michael’s expression relaxed a small measure. “Now Blue Eyes, did I ever complain about the meals you so lovingly prepared?”
“No. You were too polite to utter a word. But I do think I’d take great delight in watching you squirm through a few more if you suggest the joys of connubial bliss. I will know it’s the work of Luc and Quinn.”