For some reason that brought her full attention on him. She examined him suspiciously. Her gaze spent a good amount of time on his garments.
Her nose rose. Her lids lowered. Her back stiffened. “I think you have been misleading me, sir. You are no huntsman.”
* * *
“I never said I was a huntsman.” The man offered a slow smile while he said it.
“You allowed me to believe it.”
“I allowed you to conclude I was not a poacher, which I am not. We never talked about my specific situation here. I am curious, however. What gave me away?”
“Your coat and your boots. In the shade their quality was not apparent. But here, in the sun, with you—” With you so close. She almost said it. He was close. Somehow, as they chatted, he had sidled nearer. So she could see the fine wool of his coats, and the superior craftsmanship of his boots. The hat, with its low, flat crown, still had little to recommend it, and his beard indicated he bowed to no fashion, but he was higher than a huntsman in the duke’s entourage of servants.
“Then there was your mention of assemblies. I doubt a huntsman attends them, or thinks of them so readily. Your speech is educated too.” She listed the evidence, some of which she only now gathered as she surveyed him. “I think I know who you are.”
A twinkle of humor entered his eyes. They were dark and intense but not threatening or unkind—at least she did not think so, even if his proximity caused her some discomfort. She did not experience fear as such, but a jumpy nervousness, as if this ride might turn out unlike what she expected on setting off, and this man was the reason.
He was a stranger, after all. Nice coats notwithstanding, she had been too quick to enter into conversation with him.
“Who do you think I am?” he asked.
“The steward.”
“The steward.” He laughed quietly. “First a poacher, then a huntsman, now a steward. I am rising quickly in your esteem. If we dally another ten minutes, you will proclaim me the duke.”
She burst out laughing, and he joined in.
“Do I look like a steward?”
“Not at all. Hence my mistake. I think your master is in London raising the hell he has long been reputed for enjoying, and without him here, you enjoy a more rustic practice in your grooming.”
He felt his face. “You mean the beard?”
“I do.”
“You do not care for it?”
“I do not, but my opinion does not signify. I assume you shave immediately when the duke comes down from town.”
“If I shave it on my own, will you dance with me at the next assembly?”
His tone of voice possessed a flirtatious softness, but that was not what dazed her. Something to it that she could not name—a very masculine current—took her aback.
“Do not shave on my account, sir.”
“Are you saying you will not dance with me under any circumstance, or you will even if I do not shave?”
“I—uh—if we are properly introduced, I may— That is—” She stammered like an idiot. It seemed he had come closer yet, except he had not moved.
She glanced around. Here she stood in a graveyard, talking to a stranger who in the last moment had revealed himself to be a formidable presence. It was as if he exercised a power that urged her toward more familiarity, and more physical closeness. He might have removed a cloak under which he hid his true self, and revealed the ability to mesmerize like a magician.
She was not immune to the spell he cast her way. She found herself hoping he did ask her to dance at the next assembly. At the same time, she could not ignore a sense of impending danger. This coincidental meeting had become too familiar, in spirit if not in words.
Gathering up her skirt, she turned to her horse. “I must go.”
He bent and picked up the long train that made a riding habit inconvenient for anything except riding. “I will help you onto the horse.”
“The wall will do. It is how I dismounted, right there where that tree stump rises halfway up the wall. I am very agile, and Calliope is very well trained.”
“If the horse moves, you will hurt yourself. Also, you will appear very clumsy clamoring up first onto the stump, then the wall, then the horse.”
“No one sees me to care if I appear clumsy.”
“I will see it today. If you were not so pretty, I would stand back and enjoy the theater. However, I prefer to help you mount with some grace.”
She could think of no way to dissuade him. She certainly should not allow him to do anything more than hand her up the tree stump onto the wall and hold her horse, however.
She explained all of that once they arrived at Calliope. He looked down at her as if she had just spoken in Chinese. Her heart beat hard.
He draped her train over her arm. “Are you ready?” His voice teased, as if they were about to do something audacious.
He stepped very close. She smelled leather and something spicy. His hands firmly closed on her waist. Her feet left the ground.
He did not hoist her up in one quick swing. Rather, he lifted her as if she weighed nothing, slowly. So slowly that for a long spell her face remained near his and he looked deeply into her eyes. So slowly that her body felt the warmth of his. Her breath left her.
Then she was sitting on Calliope, embarrassed and awed.
He looked up. “Did you think I was going to kiss you?”
“Of course not. What nonsense. You don’t even know my name.”
“If you think a man needs to know a woman’s name before he kisses her, you are very innocent. Too innocent to talk to strangers in the woods.” He handed her the reins and managed to cover her hands with his as he did so. Warm hands. Strong and surprisingly soft. “I will make sure we are properly introduced very soon, since it matters to you.”
He walked away, picked up his musket and hares, and disappeared into the woods.
She wished she had left first, with a kick to Calliope and an arch retort. Instead she had gawked at him like a girl with whom no man had ever flirted before.
Which was almost true.
CHAPTER 3
“The trunks have arrived,” Marianne’s mother said, as soon as Marianne arrived on the third level of Trenfield Park.
She, her mother, and her cousin Nora had taken a coach here from Calne, but the trunks came by wagon. They contained all of their worldly belongings, other than what they packed to bring with them.
“Were you riding?” her mother asked, noticing her habit. “Sir Horace said he wanted you to accompany him. He made that clear at dinner last night.”
“I can ride on my own too. I hope you do not think I need his permission or his company. That would be comical for a woman my age.”
She experienced contrasting emotions while she watched her trunks being carried into her bedchamber. The move back to Gloucestershire meant a return to her girlhood home. So why did she not experience more joy?
Perhaps because she was no longer a girl. Maybe because it did not appear her change in circumstances heralded any forward steps, but only those of retreat. It would disrupt her secret employment, for one thing. She was not sure she would be able to transfer that occupation to a new locale, and she had enjoyed making a few shillings that were just hers.
Her mother followed the servants in, then shooed them out after they set the trunks down.
“Finally, after five years of impoverishment, we are back where we belong.” Mama’s voice announced the victory, but so did her person. She wore one of her best dresses. A small lace cap perched atop dark curls dressed in high style, as befitted the chatelaine of a big country home.
“We were not impoverished. Nor is this our home again,” Marianne reminded her. “We are here as Uncle Horace’s guests and dependents.”
“Better here than in that hovel of a cottage in Cherh
ill. And it is only his home because of an accident of fate.”
Marianne did not think the death of her brother Thomas seven years ago had been an accident of fate, but rather a tragedy. Even this small reference opened a nostalgic place in her heart. She still missed him, and not because it meant Sir Horace had inherited upon Papa’s death.
Mama aimed a critical eye at the chamber’s furnishings. “I will tell Sir Horace that you must have new drapes. We both must. And dresses. You can hardly attend assemblies and dinner parties with what is in those trunks. It is all out of fashion now.” She gave one trunk a little kick with her toe. “Bad enough you rode out in that habit. It barely fits you anymore. I hope no one saw you.”
Only the steward of Merrywood Manor, a man with dark eyes and magnetic aura. “No one who matters.” With her newly reclaimed position, Mama would probably think a steward beneath them, even if he were educated and responsible for an entire estate.
Marianne often disagreed with her mother. She definitely did about the last five years of their lives. She had liked the pretty cottage in Cherhill where they lived during that time. She loved the rolling hills, and would miss seeing the big, white chalk horse on the downs every morning from their kitchen window.
No one interfered with them there. Uncle Horace left them alone. Even after he sent Nora to live with them three years ago, he rarely inquired after them. When, during his surprise visit before Christmas, he explained that he expected their return in the new year, Marianne had greeted the command with dismay.
He only accepted hers and Mama’s presence so they could continue seeing to Nora’s care. They would now be beholden to him in new ways, however. He would probably issue demands the way men tended to do. He might grow curious about Marianne’s activities or friends, and lay down rules she did not think she should have to obey. He might even create problems with Nora, if he did not defer to Marianne’s experience in handling his daughter.
Nora. “I must go see how my cousin is faring before I unpack. This has been a very large change for her, and she was quite agitated in the coach yesterday.”
Mama did not appear to hear her. She looked out one of the windows. “He has let the garden go. I will have to rectify that, along with many other things. Well, what can you expect of a man in a house with no woman to keep things sorted properly? Your father would have done no better had he not married me. Yes, it is a very good thing that I am back.”
“We can tour the garden, and you can explain your plans, after I visit Nora.”
Mama heard this time. “Oh, Nora— Sir Horace is up there with her now.”
“He promised not to do that without me. Just last night we agreed—”
“He came looking for you, and even waited, but finally went above. He had dressmakers with him, and they can hardly sit here all day until you return from a ride no one knew you were taking.”
Marianne was out the door before her mother finished. She gathered the stupid train of her habit and went up the stairs as quickly as she could. As she neared her cousin’s chambers, she heard an argument.
Uncle Horace’s voice rose and fell. Nora’s cries contained the frantic notes that Marianne knew too well. Her cousin’s episodes of frenzied high emotion had become infrequent while she lived in Cherhill. Normally Nora retreated into a quiet, almost lifeless passivity, which Marianne found equally troubling, if less disruptive.
Now, the second time in two days, Nora sounded like a madwoman. “I won’t,” she screamed. “Tell them to go away. I will not stand for it, or for them. I do not need new dresses, since I will not be going out.” The sound of china crashing to pieces punctuated her rant.
“Damnation!” Horace roared. “Hear me, daughter, you will indeed have a new wardrobe, and you will be going out, and you will comport yourself as I say. I have plans for you, and will no longer indulge you.” Horace’s fury made every third word ring loud and high, as if he intoned from a stage.
Marianne pushed open the door to her cousin’s chambers.
Her uncle swung around. “Thank God. Where in hell were you?”
Nora ran to her. Marianne embraced her and spoke soothing words while she petted her head. She noted the remnants of a blue and white hair gatherer on the floor. She looked over Nora’s shoulder at the two cowering dressmakers. “Send them away, Uncle.”
Horace raked his gray hair back with his bony fingers. He was a tall man, with vivid blue eyes and sunken cheeks in his gaunt, long face. Marianne always thought Horace looked similar to her own father during her father’s last year, when he was dying.
“I’ll not have you indulging her either. There has been too much of that. It is time for her to take her place in the world.”
Nora cringed closer. Marianne stared at her uncle. “Send them away, and take yourself elsewhere too,” she repeated firmly. “She will not calm until you do.”
He cursed, but he shooed the women out, and made to follow. “Get her sane, then come and see me in the library,” he barked.
Once they were alone, Nora’s frenzy quickly died into little more than heavy breaths. Marianne continued holding her. She took in the chamber, and her anger spiked.
Uncle Horace had put his daughter in a small, obscure spot, one that visitors would never see if Nora continued to be a problem. It held a small bed and table, and had no dressing room. An open trunk stood near a wardrobe, the servant’s unpacking left unfinished when Horace invaded.
Nora extricated herself. Calm now, eerily so, she sat by the one small window, on a wooden chair of little comfort. Pale of face and hair, large eyed and reed thin, she stared out at—what? Perhaps she did not look at anything.
Marianne believed that most of the time Nora’s vision turned inward, at thoughts and ideas she never shared. Perhaps that was not true either, though. Maybe her cousin’s mind remained blank most of the time, just the way her expression did.
She had not always been thus. Once vibrant and bright, she had emerged from a bad illness when she was fifteen in this altered state. The fever had done it to her, the physician explained. Or perhaps on that day that she took ill after being out in a storm, she had been hit by lightning. Or fallen from the horse. Whatever the cause, her brain had been affected. Nothing else could explain the change in her.
Marianne walked around the little chamber. Putting Nora here was an insult. It was as if Uncle Horace sought to punish his daughter for that which she could not affect. Forcing them all to come back here had been selfish and cruel too. He had not cared at all when Marianne explained she did not think it wise for Nora to move from the cottage in Wiltshire.
She stood beside Nora and stroked her fair hair. “I will tell your father that this chamber will not do. I am sure an error was made.”
“I like it here. It is a comforting size. I do not want my old chamber. I will not be happy there.”
Thus could Nora speak most clearly and express logical thoughts. If, when she did so, her eyes did not remain opaque, one might never know she was damaged. One might also never guess that sometimes Nora could inexplicably become very emotional. Dangerously so.
Those fits had ceased while she lived in the cottage. However, as they rolled toward this house through the neighboring countryside yesterday, one had emerged. It had taken Marianne a half hour to calm her cousin, and she had ordered the coachman to delay their arrival until she could.
“I will move up here with you, then,” she said. “It will be like it was in the cottage. The two of us sharing a chamber.”
Nora shook her head, her blank gaze still fixed on the grounds below. “I do not want you here. I do not want anyone here. There is one window and one door, and it is small and simple. I like it. I feel safe here.”
I can hide here. I can be forgotten here. I shall never leave and can go quietly mad without interference here.
“Mama and I are going to tour the garde
n so she can make a list of chores for the gardeners. Come with us,” Marianne urged.
Nora shook her head.
“I will see you at dinner, then.” She pressed a kiss to Nora’s crown.
Again Nora shook her head.
Marianne began walking to the door.
“He thinks to marry me off. That is why he wants me to have a new wardrobe,” Nora said.
Marianne halted and faced her. “I am sure you are wrong.”
“He said things just now about making myself look pretty. I know what he is planning and thinking.” She turned her head and gazed into Marianne’s eyes. “I won’t do it. I will kill myself first.”
Marianne wished she could treat that threat lightly. Instead it caused a bolt of terror to pierce her heart. “Do not say such things. Think of how I would mourn.”
Nora’s gaze returned to the window. “I do. But for that, I would have done it already.”
* * *
Marianne closed the door to the library after she entered. Her uncle paced near the fireplace, pretending to read the titles on the books’ spines.
They were actually her father’s books, carefully chosen and bound over a lifetime. Horace had inherited them along with everything else her father had owned. Because the inheritance was entailed, the premature death of her brother during the war had ensured it would all go to her father’s brother instead of her father’s son.
Horace pivoted when he heard her step. Nora had calmed better than he had. His color still high, he gestured her to a settee. Before he sat on the chair nearby, he walked over to a decanter and poured himself some spirits.
“Are you going to offer me some?” Marianne asked.
He looked over, startled.
“I have always wondered why, if men need spirits to fortify themselves after a period of high emotion, or before an unpleasant task, they do not assume women might as well,” she said.
“It isn’t done, is why.”
Horace arranged his long limbs in the chair. The way he sat, sunk back, rump low and knees high, reminded her of her brother, who had also been very tall and lanky.
The Wicked Duke Page 2