* * *
Aaron arrived at the door of Connie’s sitting room a respectable hour after they had endured another awkward dinner with his father. The fraught atmosphere was made worse by the fact that Aaron and the old man had been arguing about the state of the fields for most of the afternoon. But his father would not listen to reason and Aaron was hesitant to push him too far in case it overtaxed his fragile heart. For the time being, they agreed to disagree. A situation that was beyond frustrating because with every passing day things were becoming less salvageable.
Unfortunately, Connie was not in her nightdress when she bid him to enter. In fact, she was as formally dressed as she had been at the dinner table and was sitting primly on her sofa, embroidering something. He would have much preferred to see her drying her splendid hair by the fire, although this way was probably for the best.
‘I brought port this time,’ he said, waving the decanter in front of her and she smiled stiffly in response, barely lifting her eyes from her sewing. Her guard was up again, he could tell, and Aaron decided he was fonder of her when she was being true to herself.
‘I have never tasted port.’
‘Then you are in for a treat. This is one of my father’s best bottles. I pilfered it from the cellar and he would be livid if he knew that I had taken it. He would be more livid if he knew that I was sharing it with a Stuart.’
‘Then I shall enjoy the taste of it even more.’
He saw a brief flash of her humour then. Her green eyes had lit up with mischief and wiped away the mask for a moment. Aaron poured them both a glass and sat down on the armchair opposite. ‘I am going to visit some of the tenants tomorrow if you would like to come with me? There are a lot of them so I will give you fair warning that you might be stuck in the saddle for a couple of hours.’ Aaron also wanted to check up on Mr Thomas. The man had claimed that the seed would be delivered to all of the tenants on the morrow and Aaron wanted to catch him out on that blatant lie. Perhaps then his father would listen to reason and dismiss the wastrel. Of course, there was no real reason for dragging Connie around while he did this, except for the fact that he had found her presence today soothing.
Most mornings since his return, he rode around aimlessly for hours, trying to banish the horrifying images of his dreams from his mind. To his complete surprise, he had found that process much easier to do with Connie in tow. He had forgotten today’s nightmare at almost the exact moment she had brazenly marched up to him in that magnificent riding habit. Lustful feelings aside, he had also thoroughly enjoyed her company. It had been nice to have somebody intelligent and witty to talk to rather than moping around on his own, stewing in his own pessimistic juices. Being with Connie made him feel more normal.
She positively beamed at him, forgetting to be haughty and uninterested, or regally benevolent. ‘I would like that immensely! Do you think we might find the time to squeeze in another race? I thoroughly enjoyed thrashing you this morning.’
Aaron had enjoyed it, too, but for very different reasons. ‘We can race from cottage to cottage if you want to.’
‘Oh, I want to! I have not had so much fun in ages. My father forbade me from racing years ago. He said it was not ladylike.’ She lowered her embroidery frame and the corners of her pink lips curved slightly, although her eyes clouded at the mention of her father. ‘That has always been his most common criticism of me. Racing is not ladylike, arguing is not ladylike and having such strong opinions, and daring to voice them, are certainly not ladylike. Do you know he once told me that my red hair was not proper at all and that towering over everyone was not ladylike either? I think I have been a tremendous disappointment to him, aside from the fact that I went and got myself ruined, of course, because I have been quite unable to stop doing all of those things that he most dislikes about me. I do not think I have been a very good daughter.’
Bizarrely, she was smiling wistfully at the memory so Aaron held back what he wanted to say. He did not want to sour the mood by telling her that he thought her father was a nasty piece of work. He rather liked her height, her eyes and lips came level with his, and as for her hair? How the devil could hair be unladylike when it was quite the most beautiful head of hair he had ever seen? It was simply further proof to him that the Earl of Redbridge was a tyrant and a fool. Much like his own stubborn sire.
‘Pay it no mind, Connie. As a fellow disappointment to a parent I can assure you that you will never truly be able to please him, no matter how hard you try.’
She lowered her embroidery again and gazed at him intently. ‘How have you disappointed your father? Aside from marrying me, of course.’
Where to start? ‘My father has always enjoyed hunting and I do not. When I was younger he used to force me to accompany him in the hope that it would toughen me up. He used to get very frustrated when I refused to kill anything.’
‘Then I am to assume that you are not responsible for any of those ghastly stuffed heads?’
Aaron pulled a face that made her smile. ‘They are awful, aren’t they? But to answer your question, I am not responsible for even one of them. I could never understand what pleasure there was in chasing a frightened, senseless animal through the woods unless you needed to eat them. That disappointed my father a great deal. He was also dead against me joining the army. I had to wait until I reached the age of majority and then I had to purchase my own commission. My father thought he would stop me by reducing my allowance to such a paltry sum that I could barely afford to go out.’
‘How did you manage to purchase a commission and a uniform? Those things are expensive.’
Now it was his turn to smile at a memory. ‘I took all of the money I received religiously to a gaming hell and gambled until I had won enough to buy it all for myself. My father was livid when I came home in my new regimentals. He threatened to disinherit me.’
‘But he did not?’
‘This house, the estate and the title are all hereditary. The worst he could do was banish me until he died. The law states that it would still all come to me regardless of his wishes. Once I realised that, I knew all of his threats were empty ones. My father likes to control things. He could hardly attempt to control me if he had disowned me. It was all bluster and I called his bluff, the stubborn old fool.’ She watched him take a sip of his port to cover his sudden agitation. ‘He is still being stubborn. I tried to talk to him about the estate again today and refused to leave his study when he met with Mr Thomas.’
Inadvertently, he had given her an opening that she was not prepared to squander. Connie peered at Aaron over the top of her embroidery frame, suddenly nervous. Subtlety had never really been her strong suit and she would need to be very subtle now if she was going to find out what Mr Thomas was truly up to without tipping Aaron off. ‘Did you find out why your estate manager has not yet planted the fields?’ She pretended to focus on her sewing as if she were merely making polite conversation.
Connie could hear the frustration in his voice. ‘That man is a weasel. He came up with some convoluted explanation about a new farming method he had been researching, that doubled the yield of a wheat crop by delaying it. It is apparently all the rage in Holland and the landowners there have seen a dramatic rise in their profits. My father was utterly convinced by it.’
‘But you were not?’
He leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees, and shook his dark head in exasperation. ‘I just know that he is lying through his teeth. Unfortunately, I still do not know enough about farming to be able to argue back. I never paid attention growing up and now I am trying to cram in a lifetime’s worth of knowledge in just a few weeks. I am beyond confused by it all. I just hope that it does not do more irreparable damage until I can take over.’
Connie jabbed her needle into the frame to cover up her own unease. ‘Surely one bad harvest does not constitute irreparable
damage?’
‘One wouldn’t—but this will be the fourth. The estate is not in a good way.’
She was certain, then, that her father had a hand in it and that Mr Thomas was up to much more than merely reporting back gossip. ‘Exactly how bad are things?’
‘They are not bad, Connie,’ he said with resignation, ‘they are dire. Many of the tenants cannot survive another poor harvest and, if things continue like they are, this estate could be bankrupt in two years. Why on earth do you think I was marrying Violet Garfield?’
Chapter Twelve
‘You needed her dowry?’
‘She came with twenty thousand pounds and a share in her father’s businesses. Mr Garfield was quite desperate for his daughter to marry a title.’
For the first time Connie considered the implications that their marriage had had on him and it rendered her speechless. All this time she had been wallowing in her own self-pity and had not even spared a single thought to what it had cost him, apart from his freedom. ‘I am so sorry, Aaron. I did not realise that you needed to marry Violet quite so desperately. Do you think that there is a chance that she might still marry you once our marriage is dissolved?’
He was silent for so long that Connie began to feel uncomfortable. When he finally spoke it was with resignation. ‘I doubt it. I shall have to find myself another heiress to save the livelihoods of my tenants. With her riches, someone is bound to snap her up.’
Much like Connie had been by the Marquis of Deal. Ironically, her father had agreed to increase her dowry to twenty thousand pounds to convince the man to marry her. She suddenly felt a strange affinity with poor Violet Garfield. Both of them were apparently unappealing to any man without the lure of riches and Aaron was obviously disappointed to have been left with just her. Her needle slipped and pricked the top of her index finger. Pretending to try to save her embroidery rather than let him see how much his words had cut her, Connie hastily dropped it into her lap and examined the wound with irritation. She had to tell Aaron about Mr Thomas. Feud or no feud, her conscience would not let her keep such a dreadful secret. Not when innocent people were suffering. But the truth was likely going to cause a huge row, not only between the Wincantons and the Stuarts, but between her and Aaron. He would want to know why she did not tell him the moment that she had realised, but at least it was better late than never. Steeling herself for the inevitable, Connie turned to him.
Aaron’s eyes were locked on her fingertip. More specifically, they were fixated on the small red globe of blood oozing out from the needle prick. His face was stricken and she watched all of the colour drain out of it until he was positively ashen. He suddenly stood with such force that the legs of the heavy chair scraped behind him in his haste to get away.
‘Goodnight, Connie.’
He started to march towards the door as if his life depended on it. ‘Aaron, wait, I need to talk to you...’ The door slammed behind him and he was gone, leaving Connie completely at a loss as to what had just happened.
* * *
Aaron originally headed towards his bedchamber, but by then he could physically smell the blood. The rational part of his mind told him that was ridiculous, but there was nothing rational about his body’s intense reaction. The metallic tang was burning his nostrils, making him gag, and his skin itched with the warm stickiness of it. Within seconds, the stench was so bad that he had to get some fresh air. Fearing that his dinner was about to make a sudden reappearance, Aaron bolted down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. He ran through the hallway, ignoring the startled looks from the few servants he collided with, then through the morning room until he reached the large French doors at the far side of the room. Only when he threw them open, and felt the biting November air rush into the room, did he feel that he could breath.
Hastily, he tore the cravat from his throat and braced his arms on his knees while he sucked in the cold air like a starving man eating food at a banquet. It had just been a pinprick. Nothing more. Yet in that one simple accident he had immediately been transported to a different place. The place of his nightmares.
Ciudad Rodrigo.
Aaron forced himself to breathe slowly, hoping that by being calm he could chase away the blind panic that clawed at his gut. After several minutes he was still shaking, but able to stand up. He staggered towards the nearest chair and slumped into it, trying to make some sort of sense out of what had just happened.
His reaction to the blood had been so sudden and so violent, he had never experienced anything like it. He had fought battles where his uniform had been soaked with the stuff, retrieved the bloody remains of the bodies in the aftermath and even marched across fields so sodden with death that the mud itself had been almost bleeding as his boots had squelched across it. He had hated every second of it then, but he had coped. Why was the mere sight of a tiny droplet of it now enough to render him incapacitated? God only knew what Connie must be thinking.
Not that he had any intention of explaining it to her. How exactly did one go about telling someone that there was a distinct possibility that they were going slowly mad? That could be the only explanation for what had just happened. The nightmares had been getting worse. They were certainly happening more frequently. Last night he had awoken twice and each time he was reliving the same dreadful scene on the battlements of the fortress. But now, apparently, he could be transported back there whilst he was still awake, too. Alongside the awful smell of the blood had been the unmistakable cries and sounds from that battlefield in Spain. He could see the broken bodies of his men strewn out around him. He was in Connie’s sitting room one minute and then that had faded away and he was all alone in the smoke and the chaos, stood amongst the carnage and wondering what the hell to do.
What would a gently bred young lady like Connie make of all that? At least his insanity would be good grounds for her annulment. That thought made him laugh bitterly without any trace of humour before he forced himself to make his way up to bed. At this rate, he would be carted off to Bedlam before he could fix the estate and that thought brought Aaron up short. He could not let that happen. There were people depending on him. No matter how many tricks his mind decided to play on him, he had to hide that from the world and get on with the task in hand. Once the estate was safe it would make no difference if he suddenly declined into complete insanity. If that happened, they could lock him in his bedchamber for all he cared. He just had to hold it all together until then. At least he had more of a plan now than he had had this morning. That was something positive to focus on. Now, once his father died he had to secure the annulment as quickly as possible so that he could find another heiress. It might not be the greatest plan in the world, and it hurt to even contemplate losing Connie, but it was all he had right now.
* * *
Connie woke early and, in the absence of any maid or any breakfast tray, dressed herself in a more forgiving habit and headed downstairs to find her husband. Yesterday he had offered to take her riding again and she needed to tell him about Mr Thomas. The first person she collided with was the housekeeper.
‘Good morning, Mrs Poole. Have you seen my husband?’
The older woman shook her head apologetically. ‘Sorry, Lady Constance, but we have not crossed paths this morning. Perhaps he has gone out for an early morning ride. He does that most mornings, usually before the sun is fully up. He is awake before the lark most days.’ The smile on her face faltered and she looked down briefly, as if she were considering her next words carefully. ‘On that subject, I am very worried about him.’
‘You are?’
‘If you would permit me to speak out of turn, Lady Constance, I have known Master Aaron since he was a boy and he is not the same man who went off to war. Something is very wrong, yet half the time he appears to pretend that those five years never happened and that he is exactly the same devil-may-care lad who went
away. I am not convinced that he is. He disappears for hours on end some days, much like he has done this morning, or he locks himself away in the library. He never used to be so solitary or so preoccupied. He doesn’t sleep well either. I hear him up at all hours of the night; sometimes I hear him screaming. Deaks went in to check on him one night and Master Aaron was furious. He threatened to move out if anyone disturbed him like that again. He never sleeps past dawn. Wild horses would not have dragged him out of his bed before noon before he went away. I have asked him about it, but he will not confide in me. He just pretends that nothing is amiss and that I am imagining things. I thought that now he has a wife perhaps he might open up to you in time. I hope he does.’
The housekeeper’s concerns reminded Connie of what she had witnessed last night. Aaron’s behaviour had been odd in the extreme and Connie could not shake the feeling that it had something to do with seeing her blood. It made her wonder if he had deliberately gone out without her to avoid explaining it. Then there had been that brief flash of temper when he had let slip that he had witnessed the horror of men going to their deaths petrified and screaming, and she had seen for herself how deeply that still affected him. Something was definitely not right with Aaron. However, discussing it further with the housekeeper felt disloyal to him. He would hate that, she already knew, because he was so very proud.
‘Thank you for telling me. I shall certainly keep an eye out for him.’
Mrs Poole looked relieved. ‘Thank you, Lady Constance. That is a weight off my mind.’
Connie continued her search for her elusive husband to no avail, but she found his father in the breakfast room, reading the newspaper.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ she said politely from the doorway, ‘I am looking for your son. Have you seen him?’
To her surprise the old man beckoned for her to join him. ‘Deaks, bring Lady Constance some tea and set another place for breakfast.’ Connie had no choice but to sit down. To do otherwise would be unforgivably rude and Viscount Ardleigh did appear to be making an effort. Whether that was truly the case, Connie supposed she was about to find out.
Her Enemy At the Altar Page 10