by Mary Balogh
Three or four of the women laughed, and he read on—surely knowing that more than three or four of them were thinking of how that opening statement of the novel applied to him. Not that he had a good fortune in all probability. But he had Pinewood. And she, Viola, had made it prosperous. She gazed bitterly down at him for a few minutes before resuming her work.
He read well. Not only did he do so clearly and with good pacing and expression, but he also looked up at frequent intervals to reveal his reactions to the narrative with his facial expressions. He was enjoying both the book and his audience, his manner said—and his audience was enjoying him. A glance about the room assured Viola of that.
How she hated him!
He stayed after he had read for half an hour to discuss the book with the ladies and to take tea with them and examine and admire their work. By the time the sewing group dispersed for another week, he had all but the strong-minded few veritably eating out of his hand. He even accompanied Viola out onto the terrace to see them all on their way. The rain had stopped, but the clouds still loomed gray and cheerless overhead.
Viola could have cried, and perhaps would have done so except that she was not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had bested her—again.
“What a charming group of ladies,” he said, turning to her when they were alone on the terrace. “I must see to it that they are invited to meet here each week.”
“So must I.” Viola turned sharply away and hurried back into the house, leaving him standing on the terrace.
9
ERDINAND WOULD HAVE ENJOYED THE FOLLOWING week if it had not been for Viola Thornhill. He had not anticipated the intense sense of belonging he felt at Pinewood. He had considered several careers after university—the army, the church, the diplomatic service—but nothing had appealed to him. But the result of doing nothing had been inevitable boredom and involvement in all sorts of madcap escapades and a general sense of purposelessness. He had not even realized it until he came to Pinewood and discovered that the life of a country landowner fit him like a glove.
But there was Viola Thornhill. He assiduously avoided any further encounter like the one the night he broke the urn. He even more firmly avoided all thoughts of matrimony. That would be a solution bought at too dear a price. And so they continued to inhabit Pinewood together.
He began to return his neighbors’ calls. He continued to make friends of them and tried not to admit to himself that he was disappointed to discover how easy it was in most cases. They ought to have been more loyal to Miss Thornhill. He heartily disliked the tedious, pompous Claypoles and believed he would have disliked them under any circumstances. But their stiff, cold civility won his respect. Claypole fancied himself to be Miss Thornhill’s suitor, Miss Claypole was her friend, and Mrs. Claypole doted on her children. To them Lord Ferdinand Dudley was simply the enemy.
He set about familiarizing himself with the workings of his estate. He had little knowledge and no experience, having never expected to be a landowner. But he was determined to learn rather than leave everything to a steward. Besides, he might soon be without a steward. Paxton was Miss Thornhill’s loyal employee. He made that clear when Ferdinand called on him at his office over the stable block one morning, the estate book tucked under one arm.
“The books are very well kept,” Ferdinand said after exchanging greetings with the steward.
“She keeps them herself,” William Paxton said curtly.
Ferdinand was surprised, though he might have guessed that the small, neat handwriting was a woman’s. It was not a pleasant surprise, though, to know that she had had a direct part in the running of the estate. Worse was to come.
“You have done remarkably well,” he said. “I have noticed how everything has changed for the better during the last two years.”
“She has done well,” the steward replied, passion vibrating in his voice. “She has performed the miracle. She tells me what to do and I do it. She often asks my advice, and she usually takes it when I offer it, but she does not need it. She could have done it all without me. She has as good a head on her shoulders as any man I have ever known. If she goes from here, I go too, I am here to tell you right now. I’ll not stay to see the place go to wrack and ruin again.”
“But why should it?” Ferdinand asked.
“We all saw you betting recklessly on almost certain failure in the village,” Paxton said, not even trying to disguise the bitterness in his voice. “And we all know how you acquired Pinewood through another wild wager.”
“But I did not fail,” Ferdinand pointed out, “at either venture. I do not deal in failure. I find it too depressing.”
But Paxton was launched on mutiny. “You promised all sorts of things the other morning when we went to the home farm,” he said. “The estate cannot afford them yet. She understands that. She does things gradually.”
“The laborers need new cottages, not just repairs upon repairs,” Ferdinand said. “The estate will not pay for them. I will.”
Paxton looked at him suspiciously. Doubtless with the label of gambling wastrel put upon his person went that of impoverished aristocrat, Ferdinand thought.
“However,” he added, “I will need the advice and assistance of a good steward. Was it Bamber who hired you?”
“The old earl,” Paxton said, nodding. “He sent me here, but he made it clear to me that I would be her employee, that Pinewood was hers, not his.”
Viola Thornhill was not the only one who had been given that impression, then? The late earl really had intended that the property be hers.
Paxton, like the Claypoles, was someone he came to respect during that week.
He involved himself with other neighborhood concerns. The church choir was one. The school was another. The roof of the schoolhouse leaked during wet weather, he learned during a visit to the schoolmaster. There was still not enough money in the village fund to have it replaced, even though Miss Thornhill had made a generous donation. Ferdinand put in what remained to be raised, and immediate arrangements were made for the job to be done. So that classes would not have to be interrupted, he offered Pinewood as a temporary schoolhouse for the appointed day. He told Viola Thornhill about it at dinner.
“But how can it be done?” she asked. “There is not enough money. I was hoping that within the next three or four months—” But she clamped her lips together and did not complete her sentence.
“You could afford it?” he suggested. “I have contributed what remains.”
She stared mutely at him.
“I can afford it,” he told her.
“And so of course you will.” There was annoyance in her voice. “You will do anything to make a good impression here, will you not?”
“I suppose,” he suggested, “I could not be doing it because I believe in education?”
She laughed derisively. “And school is to be held here while the work is being done?”
“Will that inconvenience you?” he asked.
“I am surprised you ask,” she told him. “Pinewood is yours—according to you.”
“And to law,” he added.
He hoped Bamber would not simply ignore his plea to send a copy of the will. He even sent another letter, urging him not to delay. The present situation was ridiculous and impossible—and definitely dangerous. He was compromising the woman by living in this house with her. But it was not just that. He only had to set eyes on her to feel his temperature take an upward swing. Indeed, he did not even have to set eyes on her.
The nights in particular were a trial to him.
Once the will had arrived and she could see for herself that Bamber had left her nothing, she would have no choice but to leave.
It could not be soon enough for Ferdinand.
IT WAS A WEEK of near-despair for Viola. One by one she had to let go of her comfortably negative illusions about Lord Ferdinand Dudley. He was a wastrel who would care nothing about the well-being of the estate or neighborh
ood, she had thought. His actions proved her wrong on both counts. He was an extravagant, impoverished younger son, she had thought, a man who gambled recklessly and probably had huge debts. But he was going to build new cottages for the farm laborers, Mr. Paxton reported—out of his own money. He was going to pay half the cost of a new schoolhouse roof.
He was not to be driven away either by foolish pranks or by boredom. She suspected that he genuinely liked most of her neighbors. And it was obvious that he was winning their friendship. Under other circumstances, she thought grudgingly, she might even like him herself. He seemed good-natured. He had a sense of humor.
He was idle and empty-headed, of course. She clung to that illusion after all the others. But even that she was forced to abandon before the week was out.
The schoolmaster had marched the children in an orderly crocodile from the village to Pinewood on the appointed morning, and classes had been set up in the drawing room. As she often did, Viola helped out by supervising some of the younger children as they practiced their penmanship. But when a history lesson began, involving all the children, she went downstairs to the library to see if there were any letters.
The library was occupied. Lord Ferdinand sat on one side of the desk, one of the older boys on the other.
“Excuse me,” she said, startled.
“Not at all.” Lord Ferdinand got to his feet and grinned at her—with the sunny smile that was beginning to play havoc with both her digestion and her sleep. “Jamie is late for the history lesson. Off you go, then, lad.”
The boy hurried past Viola, bobbing his head respectfully as he passed.
“Why was he here?” she asked.
“To learn a little Latin,” Lord Ferdinand explained. “Not necessary for the son of a tenant farmer destined to take his father’s place one day, one might think. But there is no accounting for the desires of the intellect.”
“Latin?” She knew all about Jamie’s brightness and scholastic ambitions, for which his father had neither sympathy nor money. “But who can teach him?”
Lord Ferdinand shrugged. “Yours truly, I am afraid,” he said. “An embarrassing admission, is it not? It was my specialty at Oxford, you see. Latin and Greek. My father would have been ashamed of me if he had still been alive.”
Gentlemen went to Oxford or Cambridge almost as a matter of course, unless they went into the army instead. But they went mainly to socialize and carouse with their peers—or so she had heard.
“I suppose,” she said more tartly than she intended, “you did well.”
“A double first.” He grinned sheepishly.
A double first. In Latin and Greek.
“My brain,” he said, “is so full of dry matter that if you knock on my skull you can watch the dust wafting from my ears and nostrils.”
“And why,” she asked him, “have you been wasting your time climbing over wet roofs at night and gambling?”
“Sowing my wild oats?” His eyes smiled into hers.
She did not want him to be intelligent, studious, wealthy, generous, good-humored, conscientious. She wanted him to be a wild, indigent, unprincipled hellion. She wanted to be able to despise him. It was bad enough that he was handsome and charming.
“I am sorry,” he said meekly.
She turned without a word and left the library. She went back to the drawing room to hear about Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads and the Interregnum. Music was to follow history. She usually helped out with that too.
But the drawing room door opened just as the history lesson was nearing its end, and the schoolmaster clapped his hands for everyone’s attention. Viola turned her head to see Lord Ferdinand standing in the doorway.
“We will dispense with the usual music class,” the schoolmaster said. He frowned ferociously when someone was unwise enough to begin applauding. “For today only, Felix Winwood. Lord Ferdinand Dudley has suggested that since we have the lawns of Pinewood at our disposal and it is a sunny day, we should have a games lesson instead.”
“We are off outside for a cricket game,” Lord Ferdinand Dudley added. “Is anyone interested?”
It was a foolish question, if ever Viola had heard one. “These children do not even know how to play cricket,” she protested.
He turned his eyes on her. “But this is to be a games lesson,” he said. “They will be taught.”
“We do not have the necessary equipment,” she said.
“Paxton has bats, balls, and wickets among his things,” Lord Ferdinand said. “Long gathering dust, it would seem. He is fetching them.”
“But what are we going to do while the boys play cricket?” one of the girls asked plaintively.
“What?” Lord Ferdinand grinned at her. “Girls cannot hold a bat or throw a ball or catch one or run? No one ever told my sister that, which was probably just as well. He would without a doubt have ended up with a black eye and a beacon for a nose.”
One minute later the children were filing two by two down the staircase, bound for the outdoors, Lord Ferdinand leading the way, the schoolmaster bringing up the rear. Viola trailed downstairs after them. Even the children were coming over to his side.
“His lordship has been down to the kitchen this morning, ma’am,” Mr. Jarvey said from the back of the hall. “He has wheedled Mrs. Walsh into making up a batch of sweet biscuits. They are to be served to the children with chocolate to drink before they go home.”
“Wheedled?”
“He smiled and said please,” the butler said sourly.
Yes, he would. He would not be content until he had all the servants worshiping and adoring him too.
“He is a dangerous gentleman, Miss Thornhill,” the butler added. “I have said it from the start.”
“Thank you, Mr. Jarvey.” Viola wandered to the front doors, which stood open. They were down on the lawn beyond the box garden. There was a great deal of noise and commotion, but order was being created out of chaos, she could see, without Mr. Roberts having to step in with his loud schoolmaster’s bellow. Lord Ferdinand Dudley was gathering everyone about him. He was explaining something and gesticulating with both arms. And everyone was listening.
She might have guessed that he would be good with children, Viola thought bitterly. After all, he was good with everyone else. She stepped outside, drawn as if by a magnet.
By the time she had descended the steps to the box garden and taken a meandering route through its gravel paths to the low hedge dividing the garden from the lawn, the children had been divided into groups. Mr. Roberts was throwing the ball out to a widely scattered group, who were practicing catching it and throwing it back as quickly and accurately as possible. Mr. Paxton—the traitor!—was leading a group in batting practice. Lord Ferdinand Dudley was showing another group how to bowl.
Viola watched him lope up to the near wickets, throw the ball in one fluid overarm motion, and shatter the far wickets every time. He had stripped down to his shirt and breeches and boots again, she could not fail to notice—he was wearing the same tight black leather breeches he had worn when she first saw him in Trellick. He was patiently and good-naturedly instructing his group, none of whom displayed the smallest suggestion of talent. Then he spotted her.
“Ah, Miss Thornhill.” He strode toward her, his right hand extended. “Allow me to help you over the hedge. Have you come to join us? We need another adult. How would you like to take the schoolmaster’s place while he instructs the batters and Paxton sets out the pitch ready for a game?”
Viola had very little experience with physical sports. But she had been caught by the gaiety of the scene. She set her hand in his and stepped over the hedge, smiling gaily before she could think of reacting any other way. A few minutes later she was throwing the ball underhand, silently lamenting her inability to throw it nearly as far as Mr. Roberts had done, but nonetheless enjoying the fresh air and exercise.
“You will have more success if you throw overarm,” a voice said from directly behind her.
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“But I have never been able to throw that way,” she told Lord Ferdinand Dudley. To prove her point, she bent her arm at the elbow and hurled the ball with all her might. It hurtled ahead at a downward angle and landed with a thud on the grass perhaps twelve feet away.
He chuckled. “The motion of your arm is all wrong,” he said. “You will do better if you do not clutch your upper arm to your side and tighten all your muscles as if for a feat of great strength. Throwing has little to do with strength and everything to do with timing and motion.”
“Huh!” she said derisively. The children, she half noticed, were all running toward Mr. Paxton, who was about to explain some of the basic rules of the game to them.
“Like this,” Lord Ferdinand said, demonstrating first without a ball in his hand and then with. The ball arced out of his hand and landed some distance away. He went and got it and held it out to her. “Try it.”
She tried and achieved perhaps thirteen feet. “Huh!” she said again.
“Better,” he said. “But you let go of the ball too late. You are also locking your elbow. Let me help you.”
And then he was right behind her, holding her right arm loosely just below the elbow and making the throwing motion with her.
“Relax your muscles,” he said. “There is nothing jerky about this.”
The heat of his exertions radiated from his body. His vitality somehow wrapped about her.
“Next time open your hand as if throwing,” he said. He chuckled softly again a moment later. “If you had had the ball that time, it would have bounced right at your feet. Throw when your arm is just coming to the highest point. Ah, yes, now you are getting it. Try it on your own—with the ball.”
A few moments later she laughed with delight as the ball arced upward out of her hand and sailed an impressive distance before curving in for a landing. She turned to share her triumph with him. His eyes were smiling into hers from a mere few inches away. Then he went striding after the ball and she crashed into reality.
She did not join in the noisy, vigorous game that followed. But she did stay out on the lawn, cheering batters and fielders with indiscriminate enthusiasm. After the first few minutes Lord Ferdinand took over the bowling when it became obvious that none of the children could pitch the ball anywhere near the batter. He threw with gentle ease, not to shatter the wickets, but to give each batter a chance to hit the ball. He laughed a good deal and called out encouragement to everyone, while the schoolmaster and Mr. Paxton were more inclined to criticize.