“Yes, of course,” Lilly answered with a small laugh.
He swore quietly again. “I beg your pardon. I’d rather hoped you were speaking in hundreds.”
“Hundreds?” Winnefred would have laughed herself, but the cold shock on Gideon’s face had a trickle of nerves dancing along her skin. “Lady Engsly didn’t steal half, did she?”
“No.” He blew out a hard breath. “Your allowance was set at eighty pounds annum.”
There was a simultaneous gasp of breath and clatter of silverware. Lilly stared, openmouthed and wide-eyed. Winnefred moved her mouth to speak but found she was unable to form sound.
“There’s the bonus, as well,” Gideon reminded them. He scowled at his plate. “And given the extent of Lady Engsly’s crime against you, whatever else you might like.”
Winnefred’s mind stayed eerily blank except for a repetitive echoing of Gideon’s voice saying, “Eighty pounds annum. Eighty pounds annum. Eighty pounds . . .”
“I want a London season for Winnefred.”
That sudden, decisive, and wholly unexpected statement from Lilly cut through Winnefred’s mind like a sharp knife.
“What?”
Lilly ignored her in favor of addressing Gideon. “You said anything within reason, and I feel a season for a young woman of good birth is not beyond the realm of reasonable.”
Obviously expecting an argument from him, Lilly straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin defiantly. She needn’t have bothered.
“A season it is.” Still scowling, Gideon picked up his fork and stabbed at his eggs. “Five pounds. It’s a wonder the two of you survived.”
Winnefred shook her head in bewilderment. “This is absurd. What the devil would I do with a London season?”
“Find a husband, I imagine,” was Gideon’s reply.
It only served to mystify her further. “What the devil would I do with a husband?”
“Obtain long-term financial stability,” Lilly told her. “Something more reliable than sheep that can fall ill or crops that can fail.”
“A husband can fall ill,” she argued. “And I’d wager they fail their spouses regularly. Also, we haven’t any sheep or crops.”
“But we will, if you have your way.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Lilly opened her mouth, ready, it seemed, to explain exactly what was wrong with that, and Winnefred tried another angle. “I’m nearly six-and-twenty. I’m too old.”
“For a traditional debut, yes, but not a simple season.” Lilly leaned forward, excited. “Think of it, Winnefred. The opera, the shops, the balls and soirees, rides in Hyde Park and trips to Bond Street. You could have that life—” She cut herself off, obviously remembering with whom she was speaking. “You could have a husband with enough funds to keep you knee-deep in sheep and soil for the rest of your life.”
Winnefred considered her friend. It was impossible to miss the way Lilly’s eyes lit up as she spoke of visiting London. “You should have the season,” she decided. “You’d enjoy it far more, and make better use of it as well.”
Gideon responded before Lilly could. “A fine idea.”
“My lord, the expense, the trouble . . .” Lilly protested.
“Isn’t something you need concern yourself with,” he finished for her. “The Engsly estate can well afford it, and I’ve a great-aunt who would like nothing more than to introduce two lovely young ladies into society.”
“She’ll need to content herself with just one,” Winnefred said, adamant she would not, absolutely not, be going to London to indulge in a silly game of husband hunting.
Lilly pressed her lips into a thin line. “I’ll not go without you.”
“Lilly, that’s unfair.”
“Fair or not, you know very well I won’t leave you here alone.”
“I . . .” She looked to Gideon for help, but the man had gone back to glaring at his eggs and mumbling about the five pounds. She gave a brief thought to picking up her fork and winging it at his head but managed to restrain herself. “I’ll be fine, Lilly, honestly. I’ll—”
“Come to London with me, or the both of us stay here.”
Winnefred balled the napkin in her lap, met her friend’s determined stare, and wondered how she could possibly say no. Lilly had always wanted more than what could be had at Murdoch House or purchased with their very limited funds in the nearby village of Enscrum. She had never complained, never shied from the hardest chores. She’d gone hungry with a smile, worn cast-off clothing without a hint of protest . . . and accepted, with open arms, a child that no one else would have.
But sometimes, at night, when they were too cold, or too hungry, or too frightened to sleep, she would speak in dreamy tones of her brief time in London—of the opera and soirees and those trips to Bond Street.
Winnefred tossed the napkin on the table, swore—fluently enough, it seemed, to pull Gideon’s attention away from his eggs—and stood. “Fine. We’ll go.”
“Thank you. Freddie—”
“I’ve a fence to mend.”
Gideon watched Winnefred stalk from the room. Considerable temper on the woman, he mused. Not the nasty and potentially violent sort his stepmother possessed, but formidable all the same. He found it, and the woman, more appealing than was comfortable.
He turned to Lilly and saw that she was pale, tight-lipped, and red-eyed.
“I suppose you think me very unkind,” she said softly.
“On the contrary, I think you very clever and uncommonly selfless.” He had looked up from his plate long enough to see the painful longing in her eyes when she’d spoken of London. She had risked what she wanted most for what she thought was best for her friend. “You’re doing what’s best for Winnefred.”
“What’s better, at any rate.” Lilly picked up her fork and poked at the food left on her plate. “She’s content here, and she’ll never look for more than that unless she is bullied into it. I want her to have a chance at real happiness.”
“And she’ll find it in a London season?”
She surprised him by laughing. “Oh, heavens, no. She’ll be miserable, like as not. But she needs the comparison, doesn’t she? And there is always the chance she’ll fall madly in love with a gentleman of means.” She sighed wistfully. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
As Winnefred didn’t strike him as the romantic sort, he decided against comment. “Forgive my bluntness, but do you think she’s adequately . . . prepared for polite society?”
“She is capable of basic civility,” Lilly assured him. “She simply chooses to ignore it. Breaking her of that and providing the rest of her grooming can be accomplished within a few weeks. We’ll be late for the season, but it can’t be helped.”
Gideon wondered if a few weeks would be several years too short a time to polish the girl up, but he thought it best not to voice that concern. “We should leave for London as soon as possible if you wish to employ a decent modiste, find a dancing master, and so forth. How long will it take to find someone to care for your livestock, do you suppose, two, three days?”
“Days?” Lilly shook her head. “Oh, no. We couldn’t possibly bring Winnefred to London in three days. Her habits are more ingrained than that. I’ll need three weeks, at the very least.”
He set his fork down.
“That’s not possible.” The words came out quickly and, admittedly, a bit rudely. But three weeks? He’d come to Scotland with the intention of finding Miss Blythe, delivering her lost allowance, and making certain she was comfortably settled. In all, he’d scheduled no more than two days in her company. He was flexible man, and willing to add a day or two under the circumstances, but three weeks under his sole care was out of the question. That kind of responsibility was exactly the sort he’d made a habit of avoiding since the war.
“I’m certain you can manage in London well enough,” he added in what he hoped was a bolstering tone. “My aunt will—”
“Lord Gideon,” Lilly interrupte
d patiently, “Winnefred came here a child of thirteen raised by a series of indifferent governesses hired by a careless father. That was twelve years ago and one of her most recent brushes with polite company.”
“The village must have something to offer in the way of social gatherings.”
“The vicar and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Howard, hold reign over Enscrum’s small claim to society. We have never been welcomed to join their select group of friends.”
“Why not? Surely, when the two of you first arrived—”
“Because in our first week here, when Mrs. Howard came to visit, Winnefred informed her that the vicar could not expect to see her sitting on the wooden pews come Sunday.”
“Did she say why?”
“As I believe she explained it—she had read the Bible from cover to cover, and nowhere between those covers was there a passage indicating that admittance to heaven was dependent upon a person having spent every Sunday of her life with a sore arse.”
He struggled with a reluctant smile. “In Winnefred’s defense, there’s not.”
Lilly gave him a bland look. “She needs the time to properly train.”
He tapped his finger against the table. “Why is it you ladies always make the season sound like a competitive sporting event?”
“For an unmarried woman, that’s exactly what it is.” She lifted her eyebrows in an expectant manner. “Will you give us the three weeks?”
As he’d just given his word they could have whatever they liked, he couldn’t very well say no now. Not without relinquishing all claims to honor and the right to call himself a gentleman.
He had, in essence, been neatly boxed in, and suddenly Winnefred’s response to her friend’s demands didn’t seem quite so outrageous. In fact, he found the notion of swearing loudly rather appealing just now.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t an excuse for such a grievous breach of manners.
He nodded in acceptance, made his excuses, and left to comfort himself with a long walk.
Chapter 4
Winnefred stood in front of a fallen fence rail, Claire the goat at her side, a hammer clenched in her hand, and aggravation etched clearly on her face. After conceding to Lilly’s demand of a London season, she’d gone straight from the house to the tool bag stored in the stable, and from there, straight to the nearest broken patch of fence. Never mind it was a part of a pasture they rarely used, she was absolutely determined to pound on something.
Given her current mood, there was a high probability that she would pound that something into tiny slivers. Realizing as much, she tossed the hammer down with an annoyed grunt. She wasn’t in the habit of destroying things in a fit of temper. Nor did she indulge in tantrums when something failed to go quite the way she liked.
But honestly—a London season?
“Grown men and women, parading about like a flock of peacocks,” she grumbled.
She detested peacocks. She’d visited a grand manor with her father once, during one of the rare house parties where children had been allowed—not encouraged, mind you, but allowed—to attend. There’d been six peacocks there, and each one more determined than the last to out-screech, out-plume, and out-bully anyone unfortunate enough to blunder into its territory.
She imagined behavior amongst the ton wasn’t too dissimilar.
“Goats are better,” she announced to Claire. “Smart, loyal, entertaining—practical animals to have about. Don’t you think?”
Claire trotted over to nose the hammer, then, apparently coming to the conclusion that it was inedible, trotted back to lie down.
“Smarter than peacocks, anyway,” Winnefred murmured.
She leaned down to pat the goat on the head, then stood and turned her face into the soft wind. She breathed in the warm air, closed her eyes, and remembered the long-ago trip that first brought her and Lilly to Scotland. She’d been a girl of thirteen, grieving, afraid, and wondering what manner of cold welcome waited for her at the end of the journey. That there might be a warm welcome waiting hadn’t occurred to her.
No one was ever particularly pleased to see Winnefred Blythe.
Her father, during his infrequent visits between hunting trips to whatever run-down residence they were currently letting, had always greeted her with an air of puzzlement and disappointment, as if he couldn’t quite fathom how he had come to shoulder the expense of a small girl.
Her governesses had eyed her with impatience. Lord Engsly had met her with open hostility, and Lady Engsly with false smiles when others were present and unconcealed contempt when they were alone. Even Lilly had been initially—and understandably—overwhelmed with the sudden weight of a new charge.
How would the master and mistress of Murdoch House see her? As a burden? An intruder? Something to be endured or forgotten? Of the opinion that despised was worse than forgotten, she’d hoped for the last.
And, in a way, had been granted her wish.
There’d been no one to meet them when they arrived. Nothing had awaited them but fields that had gone fallow, outbuildings that had gone neglected, and a quiet stone house that had been stripped of most its furnishings.
Lilly had searched from room to room in a daze, as if she expected someone to leap out from behind dusty curtains at any moment and admit to it all being a grand joke.
But Winnefred had stood outside in the dying afternoon light and heard what Lilly did not.
The welcome in the silence. The silent plea for life. What was a farm without livestock and crops? A house without light, and sound, and voices?
She’d been a child yet, still in possession of that unique ability of the very young to seamlessly blend fantasy and reality, and she had imagined she heard Murdoch House whispering to her in the wind.
Welcome. Welcome.
Stay.
They had, and though they’d had no real choice in the matter, and surviving on a farm with virtually no funds or experience proved a great deal more difficult than she’d expected, Winnefred had never wished for a chance to leave. She was proud of what they had accomplished, excited by what they could do now.
They had come so very far. They had made a home. And now Lilly had set her heart on leaving it behind in favor of a house in the city and a woman who may or may not welcome them in.
Gideon walked the Murdoch House property, working his weak leg and contemplating the intricacies of promises.
He had heard men make all manner of solemn oaths in the heat and gore of battle. Some attempted to make pacts with God. They vowed, in exchange for their lives, to let off drinking and gambling, to attend church every Sunday, to treat better their wives or mistresses—or in the case of several officers, their wives and mistresses.
Some had made promises to themselves. He recalled a conversation he had heard between two of his men during battle. Christopher Weathers and Ian McClay, thick as thieves they’d been and always ready with a laugh. They’d shouted to each other over the whistle of shot, the boom of cannon, and the screams of men.
“If we survive, Ian, and make it to port, I’m going to buy the prettiest whore I can afford! Get stinking drunk with what’s left over!”
“Are you daft, man?! Get drunk first and buy a cheap lass! I promise, you’ll never know the difference!”
In the end, McClay had drank and whored for the both of them.
Gideon had made one promise and one promise only.
Never again would he be responsible for the well-being of another person.
In the two years since he’d left the Perseverance, he’d managed well enough. He’d sworn off marriage, bucked tradition and eschewed the services of a valet. He’d even refused to have live-in staff at his town house, preferring to eat at his club and relying on a maid to come during the day.
He wasn’t a hermit. On the contrary, he sought out and enjoyed the company of others. But at the end of the day, he had only himself to look after.
So how the bleeding hell had he gotten himself saddled with a pair of youn
g women for three weeks?
And what the devil was he supposed to do with them?
It took him a few minutes of worry and frustration, but eventually he decided he wasn’t going to do anything with them at all—he was going to hire someone else to do something with them. In fact, he was going to hire a great many someone elses. He was going to cram Murdoch House so full of staff, provisions, diversions—more than two women could ever think of needing—that his presence there would be superfluous. Then he was going to hide himself away in a room and pretend he’d never thought to play hero in Scotland. It was illogical, cowardly, childish, and absolutely necessary for the retention of his sanity.
Feeling better about the current state of affairs, he turned from his path along a small pond and followed a fence line separating what appeared to be an unused pasture from an unplowed field. He topped a small rise and saw Winnefred standing with her back turned not thirty yards away.
Her hair, which he noticed earlier had begun to fall, was once again in a long braid. The gold streaks, brightened by the midday sun, wove in and out of the darker tresses like ribbons. She was doing something with the fence and talking to what appeared to be a rough-coated, black-and-white dog.
“I’ll talk her out of it. There must be something else she’d like. I’ve responsibilities here, don’t I? The animals need to be cared for, don’t they? The garden has to be tended, wood gathered and chopped for winter. There are more rails like these, ready to fall with the slightest provocation. What if we forget and put Lucien here? Where will we put the new calves . . . ?”
Gideon stopped listening when she bent to inspect a fallen rail. Trousers, it suddenly occurred to him, should be required attire for every young woman. Why hadn’t men—lords and masters that they were—not yet insisted upon it? They left a little less to the imagination, it was true, but imagination could only take one so far.
Then again, sometimes it took one a bit too far. Erotic images danced gleefully in his head. Standing perfectly still, he saw himself step up behind her quietly and run a hand down her strong back. He heard her gasp of surprise and purr of pleasure, saw the answering spark of heat in her eyes as she turned her head. He bent her over further, his for the taking, for the having. A quick work of buttons, a pull at trousers, and . . .
Nearly a Lady Page 4