by Mary Balogh
More fool her, for allowing herself to indulge in dreams, she thought, lengthening her stride. Maybe that gypsy fortune-teller had not been so far off the mark, after all. She should have taken more heed. She should have been more wary.
She stopped first at the vicarage and found both the Reverend and Mrs. Prewitt at home.
“My dear Miss Thornhill,” Mrs. Prewitt said when her housekeeper had ushered Viola into the parlor, “what a delightful surprise. I fully expected that you would remain at home, exhausted, today.”
The vicar beamed at her. “Miss Thornhill,” he said. “I have just now finished adding the proceeds from the fête. You will be delighted to know that we surpassed last year’s total by almost exactly twenty pounds. Is that not significant? So you see, my dear, your daisies were sacrificed to a good cause.”
He and his wife laughed over his joke as Viola took her seat.
“It was an extremely generous donation,” Mrs. Prewitt said, “especially when one remembers that the gentleman was a stranger.”
“He called on me this morning,” Viola told them.
“Ah.” The vicar rubbed his hands together. “Did he indeed?”
“He claims to be the rightful owner of Pinewood.” Viola clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “Most provoking, is it not?”
Both her listeners stared blankly at her for a moment.
“But I was under the impression that Pinewood was yours,” Mrs. Prewitt said.
“It is,” Viola assured them both. “When the late Earl of Bamber sent me here almost two years ago, he changed his will so that it would be mine for the rest of my life. However, the present earl had the deed and chose to wager away the property in a card game at a gaming hell a short while ago, and lost it.” She did not know where the card game had been played, but she chose to assume it had been at the shabbiest, most notorious hell.
“Oh, dear me,” the vicar commented, looking down in some concern at his visitor. “But his lordship could not wager away property that does not belong to him, Miss Thornhill. I hope the gentleman was not too disappointed to learn how he had been deceived. He seemed pleasant enough.”
“In a card game?” Mrs. Prewitt was more satisfyingly shocked than her husband. “We were deceived in him yesterday, then. I did think it very forward of him, I must confess, Miss Thornhill, to make you dance with him about the maypole when he had not been formally presented to you. What a dreadful turn you must have had when he called on you with his claim this morning.”
“Oh, I have not allowed him to upset me greatly,” Viola assured them. “Indeed I have a plan to persuade him that he would find life at Pinewood vastly uncomfortable. You may both help me if you will …”
A short while later she was outdoors again and continuing the round of visits she had planned. Fortunately everyone was at home, perhaps understandably so after such a busy day yesterday.
Her final call was at the cottage of the Misses Merrywether, who listened to her story with growing amazement and indignation. She had disliked Lord Ferdinand Dudley from the moment she first set eyes on him, Miss Faith Merrywether declared. His manners had been far too easy. And no true gentleman removed his coat in the presence of ladies, even when he was engaged in some sport on a hot day.
He was extremely handsome, Miss Prudence Merrywether conceded, blushing, and of course he had that charming smile, but one knew from experience that handsome, charming gentlemen were never up to any good. Lord Ferdinand Dudley was certainly not up to any if his intention was to drive their dear Miss Thornhill away destitute from Pinewood.
“Oh, he will not drive me away,” Viola assured both ladies. “It will be the other way around. I shall get rid of him.”
“The vicar and Mr. Claypole will see what can be done on your behalf, I am sure,” Miss Merrywether said. “In the meantime, Miss Thornhill, you must come and live here. You will not be at all in the way.”
“That is extremely kind of you, ma’am, but I have no intention of leaving Pinewood,” Viola said. “Indeed, it is my plan to—”
But the description of her plan had to be deferred to a more convenient moment. Miss Prudence was so shocked at the mere idea of her returning to the house when there was a single gentleman in residence there that Miss Merrywether, made of sterner stuff herself, had to send in a hurry for their young maid to fetch burned feathers and hartshorn in order to prevent her sister from swooning dead away. Viola meanwhile chafed her wrists.
“There is no telling what such a libertine might attempt,” Miss Merrywether warned Viola after the crisis had passed and a still-pale Miss Prudence was propped against cushions sipping weak, sweet tea, “if he were to get you alone with no servants in attendance. He might even attempt to kiss you. No, no, Prudence, you must not go off again; Miss Thornhill will not return to Pinewood. She will remain here. We will have her things sent for. And we will lock all our doors from now on, even during the daytime. And bolt them too.”
“I will be perfectly safe at Pinewood,” Viola assured both sisters. “You must not forget that I am surrounded there by my own loyal servants. Hannah has been with me all my life. Besides, Lord Ferdinand will be leaving soon. He is about to discover that life in the country is simply not for him. You can both help me if you will …”
On the whole, Viola thought as she made her way homeward, she was pleased with her afternoon’s visits. At least all the villagers with whom she was closely acquainted had heard her side of the story before he had had a chance to tell his own. And those she had not told would soon find out for themselves. News and gossip traveled on the wind, she sometimes thought.
As far as those families who lived in the country were concerned, well, she would be able to talk to several of them this evening when she dined at Crossings with the Claypoles.
Lord Ferdinand Dudley would dine alone at Pinewood. Viola smiled with sheer malice. But thinking of the man only served to remind her that she could no longer approach her home with the usual glad lifting of her spirits. She looked ahead up the lawn toward the house and wondered if he was standing at one of the windows, watching her. She wondered if she would encounter him as soon as she entered the house—in the hall, on the stairs, in the upper corridor.
It was intolerable to know that a stranger had invaded her most private domain. But there was no help for it, for the moment at least. And she could not afford to allow her footsteps to lag. She had an evening engagement to prepare for.
She was striding along the terrace from the stable side of the house several minutes later, determined not to tiptoe fearfully into her own home, when she was met by the sight of him striding onto it from the opposite direction. They both abruptly stopped walking.
He was still in his riding clothes. He was hatless. He looked disorientingly male in what she had made into her own essentially female preserve. And he was clearly making himself right at home. He must have been down by the river or out behind the house, inspecting the kitchen gardens and the greenhouses.
He bowed stiffly.
She curtsied stiffly—and then hurried on her way to the house without looking at him again. Whether he was coming in behind her or was still rooted to the spot or had gone to jump into the fountain, she neither knew nor cared.
“Mr. Jarvey,” she said, seeing him pacing about the hall looking unaccustomedly lost. “Have Hannah come up to me, please.”
She continued on her way upstairs, assuring herself with every step that she hurried only because there was little time left before she must leave for Crossings.
If only he were not so handsome, she thought. Or so young.
If only she had not flirted with him yesterday. Not that she had really flirted, of course. It had been her duty as a member of the fête committee to be pleasant to everyone, villager and stranger alike. She had merely been amiable.
Viola sighed as she hurried along the upper corridor in the direction of her bedchamber. A spade might as well be called a spade. She had flirted with him.
She would not allow her mind even to touch upon that kiss. But she could feel the hardness of his thighs against her own and the warm softness of his lips parted over her own, and she could smell his cologne all the time she kept her mind off that particular incident.
“ ‘EACH WITH HIS BONNY lass.’ ”
Ferdinand determinedly clamped his teeth together after singing just the one phrase and drew a leather-bound book randomly off a library shelf. He had sung the song with cheerful gusto as he approached the house for the first time many hours before. But it had stuck in his unconscious mind, as songs sometimes do, so that he had caught himself singing or humming snatches of it ever since, until he was heartily sick of it. It was a ridiculous song, anyway, with all its interminable fa-la-las.
And he was definitely not in the mood for music. He was rattled. And annoyed too—with himself because he had allowed her to dampen his spirits, with her because she had done the dampening. And with Bamber—no, make that plural. He was furious with the Bambers, father and son. What the devil sort of responsible heads of the family had either of them been? The one had sent her here with promises he had forgotten to honor—or had had no intention of honoring in the first place—and the other seemed unaware of her very existence.
He himself had allowed her to dig in her heels and put him in the embarrassing situation of sharing a house with an unmarried young lady. And a damned gorgeous one too, though that had nothing to say to the matter. He should have kicked her out. Or stayed at the Boar’s Head himself until that infernal will could arrive and convince her that she had no claim to the property.
Ferdinand ran his fingers through his hair and glanced at the letters on the desk, sealed and ready to go in the morning. Perhaps he should simply go and get the will himself. Better yet, he should go and send it to her with a trusty messenger and a formal notice to quit. He would return after she had left.
But it would seem so damnably weak to turn tail and run and let someone else do his dirty business for him. It was just not the way he did things. It was not the Dudley way. If she could be stubborn, he could be ten times more so. If she was willing to risk her reputation by living here with him unchaperoned, on her own head be it. He was not going to worry his conscience over it.
He should go to bed before she returned from her dinner party, Ferdinand thought. He had no particular wish to encounter her again tonight—or ever again, if it came to that. But dash it all, it was not even midnight. He looked about him at the tastefully furnished library, with its cozy sitting area about the fireplace, its elegant desk, and its small but superior collection of books, which he had noticed were not even dusty. Did that mean she was a reader? He did not want to know. But he liked the library. He could feel right at home here.
Once she was gone.
He had not wanted to play for the wretched property in the first place, Ferdinand recalled, replacing the book on the shelf when it became obvious that his mind was too distracted to allow him to read tonight. He had never been much interested in card playing. He preferred physical sport. He liked the sort of extravagant dares with which the betting books at the various gentlemen’s clubs always abounded—particularly the ones that involved him in the performance of some dangerous or daring physical feat.
He had played that night at Brookes’s up to the limit he always privately allowed himself, and then he had risen to leave. There was a party he had half promised to look in on. But Leavering, who had accompanied him to the club, was just then being called away by the news that his wife was in childbed and likely to deliver at any moment, and Bamber, loud and obnoxious in his cups—as he invariably was, damn him—was accusing the prospective papa of making a lame excuse to leave with his winnings before he, the drunken earl, had had a chance to win them back. His luck was changing, he had declared. He could feel it in his bones.
Ferdinand had caught his friend by the arm just when the scene was threatening to turn ugly and was beginning to attract attention. He had offered to take Leavering’s place and had tossed five hundred pounds onto the table.
A few minutes later he had been exclaiming in protest over the signed voucher Bamber had cast onto the table in place of money. It had represented the promise of property that no one in the card room had ever heard of—it was certainly not Bamber’s principal seat or any of his better known secondary properties. Somewhere called Pinewood Manor in Somersetshire. Somewhere probably nowhere near as valuable as the five hundred pounds Ferdinand had thrown in, one of the players had warned.
Ferdinand would not have played any man for his home—no true gentleman would. But Pinewood was apparently some subsidiary, inferior property. And so he had played—and won. And discovered the next day from both Bamber’s solicitor and Tresham’s that Pinewood really did exist and really was his. When in a pang of conscience, despite everything, he had called on Bamber the day after that to offer the return of the property in exchange for some monetary settlement of the gaming debt, the earl, nursing a colossal hangover from some orgy the previous night, had announced that talking made his head feel as if it were about to explode. Dudley would doubtless humor him by going away. And he was certainly welcome to Pinewood, which Bamber was unlikely to miss, having never set eyes on the place or seen a penny in rents to his knowledge.
And so Ferdinand had set out with a clear conscience to discover and inspect his new property. He had never owned, or expected to own, any land. He was the son of a duke, it was true, and enormously wealthy, to boot—his father had left him a generous portion, and both his mother and her sister had left him their not-insignificant fortunes on their deaths. But he was a younger son. Tresham had inherited Acton Park and all the other estates with the ducal titles.
Drat! Ferdinand thought suddenly, lifting his head and listening. The knocker had rattled against the front door and it was being opened. There was the sound of voices in the hall. More than one. More than two. Either all the servants had come upstairs to greet her return, or else she had brought people back with her. At almost midnight?
His first impulse was to stay where he was until they were all gone. But that butler fellow knew he was in here, and a Dudley could not have it said that he had skulked out of sight rather than establish from the outset that he was master of his own domain. He trod purposefully across the library and opened the door.
There were five persons standing in the hall—Jarvey, a small, plumpish woman who looked like a maid, Viola Thornhill, and two strangers, a man and a woman. The man was not entirely a stranger, though. He was the dry stick who had given it as his opinion yesterday that wagering was inappropriate to a church fête.
They all looked his way. Viola Thornhill herself did so by glancing over her shoulder at him, her eyebrows raised, her lips slightly parted. She was wearing a green silk opera cloak, the wide hood spread becomingly over her shoulders, her head with its high coronet of dark red braids bare of any covering or adornment.
Damn! Where the devil had he seen her before this trip to the hinterlands?
“Good evening.” He stepped into the hall. “Will you present me, Miss Thornhill?”
The maid disappeared upstairs. The butler melted into the background. The three remaining people all gazed at him with undisguised hostility.
“This is Miss Claypole,” Viola Thornhill said, indicating the tall, thin woman of indeterminate age. “And her brother, Mr. Claypole.”
She did not introduce him to them. But then, it was probably unnecessary. He had doubtless formed the chief topic of conversation for the evening. Ferdinand bowed.
Neither visitor veered from the upright.
“This will not do, sir,” Claypole said with pompous severity. “It is extremely improper for you, a single gentleman, to be occupying the home of a single, virtuous lady.”
Ferdinand’s right hand found the gilded handle of his quizzing glass and raised it to his eye. “I agree with you,” he said curtly after a significant
pause. “Or would if your facts were correct. But they are topsy-turvy, my good fellow. It is the single, virtuous female who is occupying my home.”
“Now, see here—” Claypole took one aggressive stride toward him.
Ferdinand dropped his glass on its ribbon and held up his hand. “Take a damper,” he advised. “You do not want to go that route, I do assure you. Certainly not in the presence of ladies.”
“You have no need to rush to my defense, Mr. Claypole,” Viola Thornhill said. “Thank you both for escorting me home in the carriage, but—”
“You will but me no buts, Viola,” Miss Claypole said in strident tones. “This scandalous situation calls for an act of demonstrable propriety. Since Lord Ferdinand Dudley has chosen to remain at Pinewood instead of removing decently to the inn, then I will remain here as your chaperon. Indefinitely. For as long as I am needed. Humphrey will have a trunk of my things sent over in the morning.”
Some of the tension had drained out of Claypole’s body and flushed face. He had clearly realized how foolhardy it would be to come to blows. Ferdinand turned his attention to the sister.
“I thank you, ma’am,” he said, “but your presence here will be quite unnecessary. I cannot answer for Miss Thornhill’s reputation, but I can answer for her virtue. I have no intention of having my wicked way with her as soon as we are alone together—alone except for a number of servants, that is.”
Miss Claypole appeared to add an extra couple of inches to her height as she inhaled audibly.
“Your vulgarity is boundless,” she said. “Well, sir, I am here to guard Miss Thornhill’s reputation as well as her virtue. I would not trust you one inch farther than I could see you. We have been informed today—my mother, my brother, and I—that you forced her to dance about the maypole with you last evening. Do not think to deny it. There were any number of witnesses.”
“Bertha—” Viola Thornhill began.
Ferdinand had his glass to his eye again. “In that case,” he said, “I will not perjure myself by denying it, ma’am. Now, I believe you and your brother are leaving?”