Tempting the Earl

by Rachael Miles

  For the first time, she smiled—a wan, thin, almost sad smile. “Then, I will proceed.” She folded her hands before her. “At stake here are not my funds or your power. It is your reputation, your family’s reputation. If you refuse to set me free, I will destroy it. Because I have the power here, not you.”

  He began to object, but she cut him off.

  “For years, you have claimed I am your wife and allowed me to act on your authority. I have run your estate, most would say admirably, and for that service, you have paid my bills. Nothing more. If you continue to insist that I am your wife, then legally you must pay your wife’s expenses—and I am certain, I can spend enough that you will regret keeping me. Conversely, if you wish to be free of me, but you wish to avoid paying a settlement, you could show me to the door, with no settlement, no clothing, and no means of support other than what I have left from your father and what I can create from my own ingenuity. That would be your right, but again, it will come at a cost. Neither of us wishes for a scandal. No, the best course is the one I have proposed: United, we petition the courts for a ruling. They will find the marriage invalid—because it is. You will give me the modest settlement I’ve requested, and I will retire to my own life. It might take some months, but your rank will redeem you. Soon you will find that you are invited to every dinner and ball by every eligible debutante’s family. My proposal is a reasonable response to an unusual situation. To show you are also reasonable, accept the proposal.”

  Harrison felt stunned. It was a different argument than he expected, but one that showed a fire in his wife that he had not seen before. He’d seen glimpses of her wit in the music room. But this was different; here he saw a fully formed, deliciously seductive brain. And he admired it. Had he seen this woman at his marriage, he might have come home to spar with her before. But he hadn’t allowed himself to see anything but his own righteous anger.

  “If you want me to agree to present a unified front to the courts, then make it worth my while.”

  “I never knew you to be a blackguard.” She looked surprised, then resigned.

  “You misunderstand me. Certainly I find the thought of once more enjoying the pleasures of your . . . company . . . quite appealing. But my proposition has nothing to do with mere physical entertainments.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want time. I need to conclude some business too sensitive to endanger by a scandal surrounding my marriage. I wish for you to do nothing, to make no changes, to remain here on the pretense of being my wife.”

  “How long?”

  “Till the end of the special session.”

  “That’s three, perhaps four months.”

  “But in the end you get your reasonable solution: the settlement you’ve requested and my agreement before the courts. But I want one more thing. Until we separate, it must appear to anyone who observes us that we are a devoted couple.” Harrison found himself surprised at his own words, but he let them stand.

  “Why would I agree to that? It will only make the scandal greater when our marriage is declared invalid.”

  “I am not saying that I wish to remain married. I only wish to be certain that we have not taken one hasty decision and replaced it with another.”

  “Six years, Harrison. There is nothing hasty about this decision.”

  “I don’t wish to argue, Olivia. I simply need time. If you are to leave, I need to be tutored in the status of the estate and its tenants. It will make that tutoring easier if the tenants merely believe I have finally come home, not that I am about to set you aside on a legality.” It was true and wasn’t, but what mattered was that she believed it.

  “But you are doing nothing. The marriage is invalid.”

  “And yet my father is the one who arranged the marriage, so any criticism of its forms will fall to his—and by extension, my—door. If I am to agree to your settlement, I must have this time to learn the estate and its functioning without the specter of scandal hanging over my every decision.”

  “Of course.” Her voice was slightly less cold. “I’m relieved to hear you consider the needs of the estate. It deserves an engaged lord of the manor.”

  “Then, tomorrow, I would like to review the estate accounts. Will you show them to me?”

  “I will put the steward at your disposal. He’s a fine man—the son-in-law of your father’s manager, Herder.”

  “No, Olivia. I would like you to give me the benefit of your experience.” He watched her stiffen at the familiar name, and he resented again that she allowed everyone else the use of it, but not him. “It’s the least you can do for leaving me.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Meet me in the morning room tomorrow.”

  “One more thing. I’d also like to remain as one of the scholars for a little while at least, to see from the inside, as it were, how the program works.”

  “I will inform them that you will be working among them.”

  “No, I mean that I would like to remain Mr. MacHus.”

  “You wish for me to lie to them.”

  “No, I wish simply for you to not inform them.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Yes. In one case you are asked to play an active role in a deception; in the second, you simply omit to answer a question that no one is asking. Besides, as you have just told me so explicitly, this is my house, and you have no standing here.”

  “And to think I once believed I might love you, given time and mutual interests.”

  He ignored her words, and what they stirred within him. “Do we have an agreement?”

  She shook her head in disbelief and frustration. “I agree to teach you about the estate, but I will have to consider the rest. I’m not certain I can pretend a devotion I do not feel and have never been given cause to develop.”

  * * *

  As it always did, the dream came to torment her shortly before dawn. When she awoke, she would remind herself that the dream only came when she felt unsettled or insecure—that her conflict with Harrison had reminded her of all the ways her security depended on someone else and not her own actions. But until she awoke, she was a child again, not more than five or six, and her father was gone.

  She tugged her knees into her chest and pulled the thin blanket up over her shoulders. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. But the tears streamed down her cheeks whether she wanted them to or not. She brushed them away with an angry swipe of the back of her hand.

  Nothing of his was left. Not his best suit, or his second best one, or the boots she kept polished and shining for him in the corner by the cot.

  Before the empty hearth, on a three-legged stool, she could see the small beaded reticule he’d given her for her sixth birthday. His little lady, all grown up he’d called her, and she’d stood extra tall. Beneath it was the letter he’d pressed into her hands three days before. “Now, keep this safe for me, just until I return.” She could read the name on the front: Lord Walgrave.

  She’d flung the letter to the floor and wrapped her arms around his knees. “I want to go with you! You!”

  He’d put his hand on her head, brushing back the hair from her face. “Ah, sweeting, it won’t be more than a day or two. I’ve left you tinder and some bread. Wait for me like you always do.”

  She’d felt the rising panic in her stomach as she always did when he left. The bile tasted strong on her tongue.

  “You know what to do?” He waited for her answer.

  “Stay in the cottage. Hide if someone comes by. If they find me, run for the forest and hide until they leave.”

  “Good girl, sweeting.”

  But a day or two had lengthened into three, then five, then seven. He’d never been gone so long, not without telling her at the start and making sure she had enough provisions.

  She pressed her hand into her stomach. Hunger had burrowed its way into her belly and spent each day trying to gnaw its way out. The bread—rationed out so carefully—had lasted only four
days. When she’d run out of the tinder he’d left, she’d collected sticks in the woods. But yesterday the snow had come down thick, and she’d run out of kindling. The room was cold, so cold. She wore both her dresses and both pairs of socks.

  She slid her body down into the center of the cot and curled into herself, trying to find some warmth. He’d come back. He always came back.

  The dream always ended then—on the sickening realization that her father would not return. That as much as she loved him, he had abandoned her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Olivia sat in the morning room, waiting for Harrison to come for his morning coffee. The night before, in her study, she had laid out the ledgers in which she recorded expenses and profits for each aspect of the estate. She even provided her receipts, wanting him to know how hard she’d worked to keep his estate running smoothly and well. But it had made her melancholy. When she’d placed the estate ledgers and the folders of receipts on the desk, she had torn out the pages on which she’d calculated the size of her settlement. She’d done it a dozen different ways: a small cottage, a larger house, a house abroad, servants, no servants, etc. She’d anticipated every possible budget, from Harrison giving her nothing to Harrison giving her the full amount she’d requested. The full amount was more than she needed in any of her calculations, but it was the amount that she imagined his friends and solicitors would find appropriate for a woman of her former rank.

  She had no interest in remaining on the estate, but she didn’t wish to leave her home either. It was a difficult position, for no matter which choice she made, she would be left unsatisfied in one way or the other.

  Outside the window, the resident scholars were taking their morning constitutional in the garden. The scholars exercised for twenty-one minutes exactly (a number Partlet and Lark had established through some logical syllogism based on the longevity of pigeons). Their routine was unvarying, a circuit from the lodge through the kitchen garden and back again, while performing an exercise with their arms and legs that Quinn said was based on the movement of the stars. As she watched them wave their arms and lift their knees high, Olivia realized that she didn’t want to say goodbye to them just yet. Harrison’s proposal appealed to her because it meant she could delay saying goodbye to her scholars so soon, but she still would have to do it sometime. Was it better to act precipitously or delay?

  As it was, nothing had yet gone as she had planned. She’d imagined a clean break. Send Harrison the letter, file the claim, wait for the determination of the court, and leave. But even so, she’d held the papers her solicitors had drawn up for a month before steeling her heart to send them to Harrison, and she’d almost called the mail carrier back a dozen times before he walked out of sight. If she hadn’t grown to care for Harrison in that wedding fortnight long ago, she might have been able to remain his countess. But somehow it felt like a betrayal of herself, of Harrison, and even of Sir Roderick to remain when he could never love her.

  And what damage could that do to her heart? She’d waited for him for six years on the basis of a fortnight’s acquaintance. What other foolishness would seem reasonable after three months of pretended devotion? She couldn’t do it, as much as she might wish to find herself in his arms again.

  No, since her marriage, she’d been in stasis, always waiting for Harrison. Even Odysseus’s patient wife had had suitors during her twenty-year vigil. Olivia often wondered what Penelope had thought during those years, but the writer of the Odyssey had been uninterested in a woman’s perspective. What happens, men, when you leave a wife behind for twenty years? Will you come home to discover her faithful to your memory, like Penelope? Or plotting your murder, like Clytemnestra? Olivia had drawn a mental line with Penelope at one end and Clytemnestra at the other, and at the end of each day for a year she’d plotted her position. When the dots fell consistently at Clytemnestra’s end of the line, she knew she needed to make a change. She’d begun to write, some time later she’d become HG, and a little later she’d renewed her contact with Mentor. Before, as a governess, Olivia had given the Home Office eyes and ears in the homes of foreign aristocrats like Baron Ecsed. This time, Olivia used her essays to promote the public good, even when that meant helping Mentor identify traitors among her English correspondents.

  The scholars began their strange ostrich walk back to the lodge, and Olivia looked at the clock. One minute. Where might Harrison be?

  * * *

  Harrison settled himself at the desk in Olivia’s study, having borrowed a set of keys from Herder’s son-in-law. He’d risen early and, still smarting at Olivia’s friendship with the parson, he’d written a letter to Aldine, asking his solicitor to investigate both the parson and the scholars. In particular, Harrison asked Aldine to recommend measures to limit their influence on the estate and its reputation, even if that extended to closing the library and dismissing the scholars. He’d written estate, but he meant Olivia. He’d sealed his letter with a smug satisfaction and carried it to Herder’s for Walker to post. He still had an hour to review the materials before his meeting.

  But he found himself pondering instead his conversation with Olivia on the previous day. He’d come to realize that he had made a tactical error early in their marriage. His father had assured him he’d chosen a practical woman for him, and as a result, in every communication, practicality was all he saw. But what place does a record of crop rotations leave for demonstrating an agile wit? Now, having lost her, he was intent on discovering all those things about her he’d never seen.

  Perhaps that was the reason he’d asked Olivia not just to remain his wife until the end of the special session but also to pretend marital devotion. Perhaps he’d hoped that by acting as if she loved him, she might discover some affection for him after all, might feel a fraction of what he’d felt for her so quickly six long years ago. But that was the question, wasn’t it: Could pretend devotion become real love?

  He’d spent years protecting himself from Olivia and from the memory of her face. But now he could imagine nothing else. Olivia was not a traditional English rose, but he found her beauty enchanting. He always had. It had been part of the problem in the marriage. He’d feared that if he opened his heart to her, even a little, he would find himself bound to her not just in the law, but body and soul. And then he would run the risk of turning into his father, who, having lost his loves and his dreams, surrounded himself with useless objects, entertaining himself by manipulating the lives of others.

  The clock chimed on the mantel, and he shook off his reverie. If he were to review her records before their meeting, he had to begin.

  Before him lay several ledgers, the figures all entered into carefully ruled columns. Beneath each ledger was a folio containing receipts and invoices to match the ledger entries.

  The completeness gave him pause. Eventually, of course, he would have asked for supporting documents in order to audit the ledgers. But for Olivia to have provided them from the first suggested much about her idea of him. Too much. He would have liked to think she thought him thorough and careful, but more likely she imagined him petty. The thought disturbed him. But when did he concern himself overmuch with the feelings of those he was investigating?

  At the word investigating, he caught himself. He hadn’t intended—at least not consciously—to investigate her. But he couldn’t set aside his conviction that he’d seen her in London and that she’d run from him. The housekeeper had insisted Olivia was at the estate on that day, but the housekeeper was loyal to Olivia. All the servants were. It was another reason that he needed for her to remain at the estate as his countess a little longer. It would make taking over the management of the estate difficult if they all felt she had been wrongly displaced.

  He forced the thoughts away. He would address the attitudes of the servants when the time came. At this moment, he needed to discover all that he could about the management of his estate. His estate—the words still gave him no pleasure. Once again he felt the tighteni
ng of a noose around his neck. This was his estate, these were his people, and he would have to be part of their lives. Laugh at their jokes, send gifts when they married or bore children, grieve with them when they lost a child, a spouse, or a parent.

  It was the engagement with the people, not the estate itself, that felt suffocating. He had inherited so few of his father’s and his mother’s skills. His father could talk to a stone, and the stone would talk back. His mother’s compassion and foresight had made her universally beloved. Guilt pressed heavy on his conscience, consuming him as it always did. As a coddled and cosseted boy blindsided by grief, he had taught himself to be impervious to doubt, to remorse, to pain. To love. But he hadn’t been impervious to Olivia, or her letter saying she was leaving him. If he had been, he would have stayed in London, where it would be easier to pursue his suspicions about An Honest Gentleman.

  He shook the thought away. He was torn as usual between obligations—between his duty to the estate and his duty to the nation. Olivia managing this estate had allowed him to devote himself to his career with the Home Office. Perhaps if he could make her happier—promise to visit and to take her to London, even give her children—she might consider staying on as his countess and continue managing the estate. But he wondered if that was even a reasonable thought. The Olivia who explained the legalities of their marriage was unlikely to be easily swayed.

  Once more he forced his attention back to the estate records—a task he could manage. The stack in the center related to the kitchen. The week’s menu sat on top, with a brief note carefully lettered at the bottom: “One additional scholar this week.” Harrison harrumphed. Had she written it before or after she had discovered he was MacHus? If Olivia expected him to take over the management of the estate, then he would begin with the menu.