The Companion

by Deborah Simmons

  Although Chloe avoided glancing at his handsome face, his nearness affected her in most peculiar and unexpected ways. When she touched him, it was as if she felt their connection right down to her toes. Heat and a curious sort of languor engulfed her, making her both anxious to flee and loathe to break away.

  Their progress was slow because of the cane, and Chloe regretted that she was an added burden. But her sympathy soon dissipated when he seemed all too happy to be rid of her. With little more than a grunt, he saw her seated, then moved on to his place at the head of the long table set with exquisite plate. Hero or no, he appeared to be the typical nobleman, too high in the instep to acknowledge her, Chloe noted, which made dinner an interminable, awkward affair.

  Although the food was delicious, more varied and sophisticated than any she had ever tasted, the conversation was stilted. The dowager brayed like a donkey, the earl was sunk in silence, and Chloe was at a loss as to what to do. It soon became apparent that Kit and his grandmother were at odds that stretched far beyond their places at opposite ends of the table.

  For a moment Chloe wasted her time wishing for her own less laden board but far more gentle company, and she pined for her father, who had engaged her in all sorts of discussions, both lively and pleasant. However, she swiftly banished such melancholy, deciding that if she had no liking for the situation here, she must do her best to change it.

  And so she did. She spoke at first of her journey, trying not to wince when the dowager broke in with some dispute over her words, then she turned to her new home. “I could not help but admire the Yorkshire countryside,” she said truthfully.

  “Bah! Perhaps if you are a farmer or dairymaid,” the dowager said, but Kit seemed to perk up a little, if only in counterpoint to his grandmother’s disdain.

  “I have seen much in my travels, but nothing to rival these lands, especially in the autumn,” he said.

  Chloe nodded. “I am eager to explore further,” she admitted, even as she wondered if her duties would allow her any such free time. She could not imagine the dowager taking long, leisurely treks over the hills and dales. “Yet there must be many beautiful walks close at hand, for Hawthorne Park is a magnificent landscape,” she added.

  “It was done by Capability Brown himself and cost a pretty penny, too, I fancy,” the dowager said. Although she snorted, Chloe detected a hint of pride in the older woman’s voice. “Of course, in those days people liked an elegant, clean sweep of garden, not the cluttered wilderness that is popular today!”

  “Perhaps tastes have changed, but there is no denying that the Park was Brown’s best work,” Kit said, and Chloe glanced at him in surprise. Although he spoke casually, she sensed the same pride of place underlying his words. Perhaps the dowager and her grandson were not so different, after all.

  “Well, if you’re all that enamored of it, then why don’t you take Chloe on a walk after dinner?” the dowager suggested tartly, causing Chloe some dismay. Although her acquaintance with the earl was brief, she knew immediately that he would not agree.

  “It’s too dark to see anything now,” he said, confirming her belief and withdrawing from the conversation so completely that Chloe blinked in surprise. Stepping in, she demurred, as well, but her protests were loudly overridden by the dowager.

  “You may give her a tour tomorrow, then, when it is light enough for you,” the noblewoman said, glaring at both her grandson and Chloe, as if her plans were settled between them. But one look at Kit’s grim expression and set shoulders showed Chloe he held quite a different opinion.

  Indeed, she guessed he would disappear rather than show her any hospitality. His attitude was so apparent as to be amusing, yet Chloe felt a sting of hurt at his rejection, which she put down to her own loneliness. It was only natural that she would seek out a friend here, but better that she eliminate Kit as a possibility. The last thing she needed was to waste her time on the sullen and sharp-tongued earl.

  As if to prove her right, Kit made his escape from the table as gracelessly as possible, dismissing his grandmother’s orders to join them in the grand salon and ignoring his guest entirely, so much so that Chloe was hard pressed to excuse his manners. She knew of those who had come back from the war with far worse injuries, men who had returned to nothing and still retained their civility, while here was a handsome, privileged, wealthy man who was not faced with hardship or starvation, yet could not possess the merest of manners in his own home.

  Chloe was beginning to think that she didn’t like Kit Armstrong, the Earl of Hawthorne, or whatever he cared to call himself, at all.

  “Go on! Go after him,” the dowager said, disrupting her thoughts. When Chloe turned to her in question, the noblewoman inclined her head toward Kit’s departing figure. “He’s probably off to tramp about outside. Isn’t that what you wanted, gel?”

  Was this some kind of set-down? Chloe wondered. If so, she would have none of it. She lifted her chin and calmly added sugar to her tea, as if the conversation were of little consequence. “I believe his lordship made it quite clear that he does not care for my company,” she said.

  “Bah! The boy don’t know what he wants!” the dowager retorted, thumping her cane for emphasis. “You were hired as a companion. Now go on to it!”

  Chloe’s hand stilled at the dowager’s words. Surely, she could not have understood the lady correctly! Very carefully, she set aside her spoon and gazed expectantly at her employer.

  “I am here to serve as your companion,” Chloe said. Indeed, that task was unpleasant enough without these added undercurrents between the dowager and her grandson.

  “I hired you to serve as a companion, but not necessarily mine. What do I need with some motherly miss simpering at me? I want you to keep an eye on my grandson, to distract him from the damned brooding he’s been doing since he returned home,” the dowager said grudgingly.

  Chloe felt a trickle of unease run up her spine, but she decided to give the noblewoman the benefit of the doubt. After all, the dowager was getting on in years, and perhaps worry for her grandson had clouded her thinking. “I’m sure that a man would serve you better in such a capacity,” Chloe suggested gently.

  The dowager thumped her cane again. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that, gel? He won’t see his old friends, or even the rabble from his army days! He won’t take an interest in anyone or anything!”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” Chloe said truthfully. She regretted that the earl should continue to suffer for his part in the war, but how could she possibly help? “However, I fail to see what you expect me to do. He shuns me, as well.”

  “Ah, but you’re a female,” the dowager said rather slyly, and Chloe stiffened, her entire body rejecting the older woman’s speech.

  There were whispers, of course, of the ill fortunes awaiting young women who came upon hard times, but she had never expected herself to be one of them. Nor could she conceive of the dowager countess of Hawthorne as the one responsible for her fall from grace. Still, she was no fool.

  And although Chloe thought of herself as a spinster, she was not wholly ignorant of what went on between men and women. She was, after all, well read, and the sudden thought of engaging in some sort of illicit activity with the earl of Hawthorne was both horrifying and vaguely titillating. Remembering the touch of his hand upon her arm, Chloe shivered, only to set her shoulders in firm resolve.

  “I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding,” she said. “I was perfectly willing to serve as your companion, but you cannot expect me to accept the same position for a male member of the household.”

  “Bah! I’m not asking you to bed him,” the dowager snapped, as if fully aware of her thoughts. “Just cheer him up a bit.”

  Chloe exhaled slowly with some measure of relief. Although the situation was not quite as bad as she had suspected, she still could not consent. “Nevertheless it is wholly inappropriate,” she answered.

  “Pah! Inappropriate to aid your kinsman? The boy can�
�t cast you out as he has the others, for you have nowhere else to go. You’re here because of family duty, young woman, and you would be wise to see to it!”

  Chloe frowned, unmoved by the dowager’s bullying. Obviously the noblewoman thought she was being crafty by hiring a destitute relative, but Chloe still didn’t see how she was going to be of any help. The earl was not infirm as her father had been, at least not physically, she thought, a blush rising upon her cheeks at the memory of his vital form. And having no memory of his personality before his injury, how could she be expected to return him to a healthy demeanor? The man was so grim that Chloe knew it would take more than a smile and a few encouraging words to affect him, especially from someone whose presence he decried.

  On the other hand, she felt a genuine sympathy for his plight. It was a rare man or woman who did not know someone who had been killed or wounded in the long war, and Chloe knew she should do whatever she could for those heroes, yet she had little inkling of what they must have suffered in battle. “It’s natural that he should feel deeply, for no doubt he has seen horrors that we cannot even imagine,” she murmured.

  “As have other men! War is war! He must put it behind him and shoulder his responsibilities,” the dowager said, as if her very demand would make it so.

  Chloe could easily see why the woman was at odds with her grandson, and with compassion like that tendered toward him, no wonder he was not better. She recalled that he had assumed the title after the death of his brother, and not long ago, either. Had he even been allowed a proper period of mourning? Chloe knew that she still missed her father with a painful ache. “He has suffered other losses,” she said softly.

  “He’s had a few setbacks, a few reverses,” the dowager admitted tartly, “that idiot girl he was so infatuated with, for one. Mind you, I told him she was nothing but a spoiled little ninny, daughter of a duke or no, but he had to have her. Proposed to her before he left, and when he returned, she found she didn’t care for the new cut of his cloth!”

  Chloe looked up, startled. “He was engaged?”

  “Pah! If you can call it that. A youthful mistake is what I call it, and well done with!”

  Somehow, Chloe found this news particularly disturbing. Of course, a handsome man like Kit would have his pick of beautiful, elegant ladies of the best lineage. In Chloe’s limited experience, she knew them as pampered, snobbish and heartless, but to think that even one of those idle creatures would be so cruel, so unseeing, as to reject a war hero because he had a limp! She could not countenance it. And, against her better judgment, she found herself wondering if he had loved her. Was he suffering from a broken heart?

  “She did him a favor taking off,” the dowager said, dismissing Chloe’s concerns with a wave of her bejeweled fingers. “But he can’t see that now. He’s sunk too deep in the dismals. Too deep,” she muttered.

  Something in her low tone brought Chloe out of her own musings, and she eyed the dowager more closely, but the noblewoman looked away from her discerning gaze. And suddenly the lady’s strength seemed to melt away, leaving only a tired old woman, thin and brittle enough to break.

  “My own husband was a bit of a...brooder,” she said slowly. “Although my son didn’t inherit any of that tendency to melancholy, I can see it in Christopher, and I won’t have it taking mastery over him.” She thumped her cane for emphasis, but Chloe could see her helplessness now, as well as her frustration with it.

  And, while the lady’s ranting and bullying had little affect, this glimpse at the real person behind the fierce facade moved Chloe to consider her proposal. Taking in a heavy breath, she tried to make sense of the dowager’s admission. Had Kit’s fiancée sent him careening into darkness, or did he have a predisposition to feel more than others might? What exactly was his grandmother trying to tell her? How deep in the dismals was he sunk?

  Abruptly, Chloe felt chilled to the bone as she struggled to put her new concern into words. “You don’t imagine that he might...kill himself?” she asked in hushed tones.

  As if the question brought her back to herself, the dowager thumped her cane upon the floor with renewed vigor. “Of course not,” she said. “I expect you, gel, to see that he doesn’t.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kit didn’t risk the main rooms, but took a back stair down to the kitchens, ignoring the startled looks of the servants as he exited the house. Although the morning was yet young, he had no intention of being pressed into service as an escort for Miss Chloe Gibbons, destitute relative. If his grandmother was to be believed. Knowing the dowager could not be trusted, Kit wondered about the young woman’s circumstances, but from the look of her clothes, she did not come from wealth. Indeed, at first glance, he had questioned his grandmother’s judgment, for their new guest obviously was in mourning, in a poorly dyed older gown, if he guessed aright.

  What was the dowager up to? Kit knew better than to accept her explanation at face value. She was not in the habit of generously taking in stray relatives, not without a powerful ulterior motive. Reaching the edge of the path, Kit forged ahead across the grass, feeling his stiff leg react to the moist chill in the air. He winced, gritted his teeth and went on, away from the house.

  Perhaps his grandmother was simply tendering a new and different bait, he mused, for upon closer scrutiny, he had to admit that the recent arrival was rather attractive. The dowager had already been through the more obvious beauties, the toasts of the past season, with their near-perfect features, their flawless manners and hungry eyes. He knew full well that most would have laughed at a proposal from Captain Kit Armstrong, but marriage to the Earl of Hawthorne, no matter his failings, would bring them the position and wealth they craved. The lust for power was bred into their bones, and Kit could easily imagine life with one of them as, after a suitable period, she danced off to London and a string of lovers, leaving her crippled husband behind.

  He had cut them all, much to his grandmother’s fury, when they were paraded before him like so much prize breeding stock. And that’s exactly what they were, he had decided soon enough. For whenever the dowager ceased harping about his duties to the estates, she went on about his so-called responsibility to get an heir. Kit didn’t think it necessary to inform her that even if he should buy himself a wife, he could not be counted upon to produce the required progeny. He wasn’t entirely sure if all was in working order in that area, and, in truth, he hardly cared.

  At first he had been too busy struggling for survival, to walk and return home, but upon his arrival whatever hopes he had harbored of returning to a normal existence had been dashed, not only by Garrett’s death, but by Julia’s reception. The daughter of a duke, she had no need for an earldom, but had taken a fancy to the dashing officer he had once been. However, she had been none too pleased by the changes in him the war had wrought. Not only had he lost the carefree recklessness of youth, but full use of one of his limbs, as well.

  Kit would never forget her words as she stood before him in the grand salon, cool and untouchable. I want a whole man, Christopher, she had said, thereby breaking off their engagement and destroying what little desire he had for the female sex. That part of life, like so much else, left him cold, and he had begun to suspect that with all his injuries, something down there had been affected. Permanently.

  But his eyesight was working perfectly, and Kit could not deny that Miss Chloe Gibbons was a fetching thing. Perhaps his taste had matured, or maybe the near loss of his life had knocked some sense into him. Whatever the reason, he no longer cared for the sort of chilly blondes epitomized by his former fiancée. Nor could he stomach constant chatter or simpering chits barely out of the schoolroom or the overtures of bolder females.

  In short, his once healthy interest in women had ceased. Yet this Chloe, with her simple clothes and her calm manner, was somehow appealing. Comforting. Steady. Not exactly the type of female he had once pursued, Kit thought with a bitter laugh.

  But he reminded himself that she was here a
t the bidding of his grandmother, for some hidden purpose. Or perhaps not quite so hidden, he mused as he caught sight of the object of his thoughts exiting the house. While Kit watched, she hurried toward him, heedless of the effect of the damp grass upon the hem of her skirt. Definitely not a typical female, he thought. Still, he had no patience for her. Indeed, he had half a mind to keep going, but his limp slowed him down so much that she would be sure to catch up with him. A flush of humiliation crept up his cheeks, and he fixed her with a hard stare.

  She seemed oblivious to the lack of welcome, however, and smiled brightly when at last she reached him. “Oh, hello!” she said a bit breathlessly. She was dressed in plain black again, a shawl thrown hastily over her shoulders, and Kit wondered if he was supposed to be moved by the poor state of her wardrobe. Moved to what? What was his grandmother’s objective? Even Kit could not believe she intended him to marry this cast-off relative in mourning. But if not matrimony, then what?

  Eyes narrowed, he studied her. She wasn’t beautiful, really, though her face held no flaws. Her skin was clear and her eyes under elegant brows were a rich, dark brown, veiled by thick lashes. Her hair was of the same shade, lustrous and long, not cut into curls as was the fashion of the London ladies. She dressed it simply, but he wondered how it would look falling free over her breasts. When his gaze traveled downward to those gentle curves, he glanced away abruptly. Was that what they intended? Angry at the two women and himself, he turned on his heel.