The Substitute Countess

by Lyn Stone

  “Lady Portia, please answer me this for I really need to know. Did my father ever mention me, even in passing?”

  The lady’s lips firmed and she looked away before answering. “Not voluntarily. It was I who brought you up to him as he lay dying. I asked whether I should send for you.”

  “What did he say?” Laurel asked in a small voice.

  “That he could not bear to see what he had wrought by indulging me. That you would hate him. He also revealed that he had done all he possibly could to earn your forgiveness after he was gone.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  Lady Portia turned away from Laurel and stared out the window at Elderidge House, just visible in the distance. “He told me then that he had willed his entire fortune to you. Not a farthing to the estate or to me, aside from my paltry dowry. I must have looked as shocked as I felt because he added that now I must rely upon your charity. It was a long-delayed punishment for what I had required of him and what I had denied him, you see.”

  Laurel could scarcely breathe. The silence was complete save for the ticking of the hall clock. The import of what Lady Portia revealed hit full force. If she had not been sitting down, it would have brought Laurel to her knees.

  Jack had married her for the fortune. All that he told her, the necessity of their marriage to save her good name, the familial feelings that brought him to Spain, his wanting to return her to society as was her due, all of it. Lies.

  Later, she could not even remember whether she had taken proper leave of Lady Portia. Even the ride back to the manor remained a blur in her mind. She ran up the stairs, took to her bed and wept until she thought she would die.

  The dream was dead. Her hopes destroyed. Her marriage, a sham. He had lied and was lying still.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What do you mean, she refuses to see me?” Jack demanded when Betty gave him Laurel’s message. He had just come in from the village, tired, dusty and smelling of horse. All the way home, he had looked forward to soaking in a bath and dressing for supper with Laurel. He had news, damn it. “What’s wrong with her?”

  Betty made a face. “Indisposed, sir.”

  “Again?” he demanded. “So soon?”

  She nodded and turned to leave.

  “Wait a moment! This is not normal, is it? Should she have the doctor?”

  “No, sir. But it’s best you leave her be for now.”

  “All right, if you’re sure. Find George and have him draw a bath for me.” Jack exhaled with frustration and stalked off to the library to have a brandy.

  Something niggled at his mind as he poured the liquor. The one-horse trap had been out of the carriage house when he rode back to the stables. No one was allowed to use that conveyance but himself or Laurel. She never had that he knew. Had she gone somewhere today?

  He yanked the bell cord. Mrs. Mundy appeared. “Yes, sir?”

  “Did Lady Laurel leave the house today?”

  She shrugged. “Jem took her down to the dower house this afternoon.”

  He sighed. “Thank you, Mrs. Mundy.”

  “You’re welcome, sir. Anything else?”

  Jack shook his head. That was quite enough. He knew precisely what had happened. And there might be nothing under the sun that he could do to fix it. Why hadn’t he told her of her inheritance himself? Everything had been going so well, he had put it off, waiting for exactly the right time.

  Lady Portia knew of the will’s terms, of course, surely having been present at the reading of it. And she had obviously mentioned it to Laurel. Whether out of spite or inadvertently, he couldn’t guess, but it hardly mattered. The trouble was that Laurel knew now, and he had not been the one to tell her.

  He felt the old compulsion to exhaust himself with activity return with a vengeance. Running, riding, even pacing would solve nothing. Instinctively, he knew that would only waste time.

  What he needed to do was face this head-on, make Laurel believe how much he cared for her, how he had changed since making the fateful decision to marry her.

  With that in mind, he hurried up the stairs, determined to make Laurel understand, to believe.

  Jack didn’t stop to knock when he reached Laurel’s door. He opened it and marched in, prepared for her anger.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded when he saw how she was dressed. The old gray frock she had worn when he first saw her looked so horribly out of place on her now. She was folding a nightrail and placing it in the carpetbag she had brought with her from Spain.

  “I learned of my father’s bequest.”

  “Portia told you. I should have told you myself. I would have eventually. That’s why you’re packing? Because you’re angry with me, you’re planning to live in London?”

  “No. I’m returning to the convent,” she said simply and continued packing. “I’ll take the mail coach to London and Mr. Hobson will make arrangements.”

  “I forbid it!” Jack exclaimed. “You cannot go!”

  She shook her head, not facing him. “You have what you wanted from me. Just as you planned, everything is yours now, by law.”

  “And so are you,” he declared. “I won’t let you go, Laurel. Not to Spain, not even to London.” He approached and took her arm.

  She snatched it from his grasp. “Don’t touch me,” she rasped through gritted teeth. When her eyes met his, they snapped with pure fury. They were also swollen and red from weeping.

  He had made her cry. Jack’s heart sank. “Laurel, you must know how I feel about you now. At first, I admit I needed what you could bring to the marriage. It was for convenience then—”

  “Your convenience!” she snapped. “You lied, Jack. The marriage was not to save my reputation. It was not because of kinship or family loyalty. You wanted the money! I should have guessed when you put off the consummation for so long that you didn’t want me in the bargain!”

  “The fortune is still yours, too, Laurel. Anything you want, you may have. And now, with our marriage, the whole of the estate is yours, as well, and you have a home. You are my wife. And I did want you, desperately, even before I loved you!”

  For a moment she looked as stunned as he was by his declaration. He realized immediately, it was true. He did love her. The words had slipped out, but they had been there in his heart, in his brain, for some time.

  “I really mean it, Laurel. I wanted to tell you the truth, but we were getting on so well. You meant too much to me to risk losing you.”

  She put out a hand to hold him away from her and covered her face with the other. “Could...could you please leave me now?”

  “You won’t go to London, will you?” he asked. No, he actually pleaded, something he had never done before. “And surely not back to Spain! You couldn’t join the order now, you know. That life was never for you anyway. You are meant to be a wife and mother,” he said softly. “My wife. Mother of our children. Please reconsider and stay of your own accord. I don’t want you to feel trapped here against your will.”

  She remained silent, her face covered, her breathing so shallow, he worried she would faint.

  “I will go then, if you will stay,” he said. “If that’s what you want, I’ll leave you alone, give you time, make myself scarce until you can think calmly and make sense of this.”

  She nodded once, her breath catching on a little sob.

  Jack wanted to hold her so badly, he ached with the need. “Before I go, let me tell you this. Hobson put the idea in my head as a way to save the estate, keep our people employed, to bring you home where you belong and to the life you deserve. I had no other option but to consider it, with no funds of my own to run this place. And Elderidge House should have been your home all along. Now it is. I truly thought I was doing the right thing for both of us.”

  He paused. “Let me add that I did not agree to or decide on marriage to you until after we met. I liked you, admired your spirit, and you seemed quite willing to wed. Love grew, Laurel, and I worried all the
while that the truth of why I married you so hastily, and that I used guile to do it, would send you running from me, just as it almost has.”

  Still, she said nothing, would not look at him.

  Jack sighed and went back to the door. He turned to her before he closed it. “I do love you, Laurel. And I need you.”

  He pulled the door shut and leaned against it in the corridor, wishing he had said more, wishing there were more to say. Finally, he pushed away and strode down the hall, the stairs and out into the dusky evening.

  * * *

  Laurel threw herself into a frenzy of spending for an entire month. In a way, it was to get back some of her own, but more so, to repay Jack for the lies and challenge his tolerance.

  She did not leave the estate, but ordered by letter to Mr. Hobson that he send numerous tradesmen to her with samples and plans for refurbishing the entire house.

  Her orders were immediately obeyed without equivocation. No one delayed to confirm them with her husband. She had secretly hoped Jack would object, but he gave her no satisfaction there. He allowed her every whim, regardless of the cost.

  Then she stepped outside her venue and into his. At her behest, Mr. Northram, the estate manager, accompanied the stable master to London to purchase a new mare for her. She mistakenly thought Jack would challenge additions to his stables.

  Apparently, her word was law, but Laurel did not mistake the reason for that odd state of affairs. Jack obviously had approved in advance that it should be so. Perhaps he really had meant what he’d said, that everything was to be hers, too. After that realization, all of the spending she had been doing gave her pause.

  Laurel had not spoken to him for so long and he had made no overtures, no further attempts to reconcile. He slept in his room. She heard him in the dressing chamber, listened for his steps in the hallway each day as he came in quite late and went out very early.

  However, each morning when she awoke, a vase of roses sat on her desk, a box of sweetmeats now and then and once a pretty pair of lovebirds in a cage.

  She knew the gifts were from Jack and that he crept in after she was asleep and put them there. Betty swore she knew nothing about it and had naught to do with it. Though Laurel still didn’t forgive him, she had to admit the peace offerings touched her heart. She missed him so dreadfully.

  Perhaps it was true that love and hate were together the same side of the coin, and the opposite of both was indifference. One could not hate so devoutly if love was not involved somehow.

  The house had been in grand upheaval for weeks with all the painting, stripping of old wallpaper, sanding and polishing. Old furniture was banished to the attics or parceled out to tenants while new arrived every day. Seamstresses squabbled over how to arrange the new draperies at the windows while workmen stumbled over servants.

  True to his word, Jack stayed out of the way and out of her sight except at dawn, when she would see him from her window, riding out on the brown gelding that once had belonged to her father. He never looked up, never waved to her.

  “Sir’s back like he was,” Betty commented one day as she fed the birds and Laurel stood watching for Jack to return from his ride.

  “Like what?” she muttered, twisting her fingers in the curtain’s fringe, her attention on the drive.

  “Dashing about, doing this and that, working the daylights out of everyone who happens to cross his path and doing just as much or more himself. The man’s a mean whirlwind. People avoid him like the devil.”

  “He’s not mean!” Laurel exclaimed. Everything Jack was doing improved the estate considerably. She had seen with her own eyes how the homes and gardens of the tenants had acquired a shine of prosperity and how crops were flourishing. Even the cows looked fatter, the sheep fluffier. At least he was using her inheritance wisely and not for his own pleasurable pursuits. “You know very well he’s not mean!”

  “Mean to you, so you said.”

  “I never! He...he skirted the truth, made me think he really cared just to get my inheritance, that’s all. Half the heiresses in England were probably married in the same manner for the same reason.”

  Betty nodded as she arranged Laurel’s books on the new bookcase beside her escritoire. “Not just nobles. It’s men...they’re all the same. Take what they can get any way they can. Some even leave you hanging in the wind like so much tattered laundry.”

  Ah, this wasn’t about Sir at all, or even men in general. “So George still hasn’t mentioned marriage?”

  “Not a word. If I had a dowry, maybe...”

  Laurel smiled. Betty was bold as brass, hinting the way she did. Well, why not indulge her? Jack would certainly have something to say about that! “How much would it take to bring George up to scratch?”

  Betty turned, eyes wide with surprise. Her mouth hung open.

  “Fifty quid? A hundred?” More than the two servants would earn together in a year.

  Betty recovered and shook her head, busying herself again with the books. “Bad of you to have me on so, ma’am.”

  “No such thing. I’ll dower you a hundred. An early wedding present. Then if George declines to take the bait, some man surely will.”

  Betty sank onto the desk chair with a hand to her head. “My word, ma’am! That’s too grand of you! What will Sir say?”

  “We’ll see, won’t we! If Sir can marry for money, why shouldn’t George?”

  Betty frowned. “You think George won’t have me without it?”

  Laurel raised an eyebrow. “Would you have him because of it?”

  Betty grinned. “Why not? I can make him love me like you did Sir.” She ran the feather duster along the top of the bookcase and danced out of the room without another word.

  Had she made Jack love her? Laurel wondered if it could be true. Was he lying again only to prevent the scandal of a permanent separation? Perhaps he had realized that she was necessary for him to get an heir. Though he had only mentioned having children the once, he must want at least one. As long as she lived, he would not be able to marry again and have a child.

  That motive for his wanting her to stay did not seem right for Jack, though. He had shown no obsession with an heir. She was the one who hoped so much for a child. So far, she wasn’t to have one and never would unless Jack returned to her bed. Was that reason enough to abandon her pride and forgive what he had done?

  Laurel immediately recognized that as an excuse. She wanted to forgive him and to be honest with herself, Jack’s reasons had been valid. The estate was hers, too, and only because he had wanted her to have that as well as the fortune. And she would never have accepted him if he had admitted in the beginning that he was marrying her for her money.

  Laurel decided on the instant that it was time to end her childish attempts at retribution and set her marriage to rights. She might not like the way he had gone about securing her hand in marriage, but perhaps he had seen no viable alternative at the time.

  At that moment, she spied him cantering across the meadow toward the stables. Tentatively, she raised a hand and waved. He must have seen her because he reined in and stopped. For a long moment, he faced her way, then nudged his mount to a gallop.

  Laurel knew he would return to the house and to his room to change from his riding clothes. She decided to be there when he came in.

  * * *

  Jack didn’t know what to think of Laurel’s gesture. It had only been a wave, maybe an impulse on her part, done without thinking. Or it could be a signal that she wished to talk. God, he hoped so.

  He reached the stable yard within moments, dismounted and left the horse to a groom for tending. The ride had eased some of the pressure within, but not all. It never did, but it helped a little. Only Laurel could dismiss it entirely and give him the recent harmony of mind and body he had not known existed before.

  If mere sex could grant that, he would have found out years ago. But he knew from his experience before meeting Laurel, that was not the answer. She had become the ba
lm to his soul, the one person he had ever known who had that effect on him.

  Bedding her was not all that he missed. The peace she granted and he craved didn’t fully account for his sense of loss, either. He needed her by him, always. It was as simple as that.

  He had begun to fear she would keep on the way she was doing for the rest of their lives. How many times had he kicked himself for offering to leave her alone for as long as she wanted? Maybe she still wanted that, but he was about to retract his offer and use that little wave of hers as his reason.

  He hurried upstairs to change.

  When he entered his room, she was standing there in the middle of it, hands clasped in front of her. He stopped, uncertain whether to approach, to speak, or wait for her to say something.

  She settled it. “I have been thinking,” she said, then cleared her throat and turned her gaze from his. “Perhaps you were justified, or at least believed you were.” She paused. “And of late, I have behaved in a very childish manner, costing us greatly in every way.”

  He noted she did not ask his forgiveness. Imp. That made him smile. “So have I, Laurel. Shall we put all of this behind us? Perhaps start over as adults?”

  She shrugged, obviously still a bit uncertain. “Perhaps we should.”

  He crossed the room and held out his arms. “Everything else in the house is brand-new. Let’s make it complete with a new beginning.”

  She stepped into his embrace and he heard her sniffle. “It’s all right, Laurel. We will be all right now, I promise. No more lies of omission, no deception of any sort.”

  For the longest time, he held her close, caressing her back, kissing the top of her head, breathing in her scent, just loving her quietly. Something melted within him, creating a softness he thought might stay forever.

  “Folks will call me the Earl of Mush,” he muttered into her curls.

  She lifted her face. “What?”

  He laughed and dropped a kiss on her nose. “I love you so much it turns my insides to porridge.”