The effect was quite comical, really, but Phoebe was too surprised to be amused by it. Who could be calling on her? Perhaps Lucy, although it was quite early in the day for a purely social call, and it was not usually the thing to repay a visit so soon as the day after it was made. Yet as far as she knew, Lucy and her mother were the only people outside of this house who knew she was here, not counting Dr. Fortens. Surely word could not have spread this fast!
Maddocks faced the room again, his official blank expression fixed firmly in place. “It is Lord Brodfield’s brother, my lady, Mr. Richard Brodfield.”
Phoebe felt as if she had been turned to stone; she sincerely doubted whether her feet would be capable of moving in any direction at all. Amazingly, her mouth opened, and the words “I’ll see in him the drawing room” came out quite calmly.
How had Richard known she was here? When had Richard arrived in London? Would she never be free of her ties to Stephen’s family? Stephen was gone, and Lord Tyneley was gone, and she desired nothing so much as to make a clean break with Lady Tyneley and Richard.
She dreaded the prospect of facing him alone. She looked at Judith, still surrounded by her delighted children and anchored firmly by the puppy in her lap. There was no help there; she could not ask her sister to leave them. Edward was no doubt buried in papers in his study. She had no choice. Squaring her shoulders, she followed Maddocks out of the room.
In the drawing room, Phoebe surveyed Judith’s fashionable scroll-backed sofa, the Sheraton chairs arranged neatly near the octagonal center table, and the reasonably comfortable armchairs flanking the marble fireplace. She decided to receive her visitor standing. Her palms were damp; caught so unexpectedly at home, she wore no gloves. She was not even wearing black, as she certainly would have been in public—she was dressed in a gown of brown pique trimmed with bands of black grosgrain. She decided to stand in front of the hearth, and wet her lips nervously, watching the door.
Even braced as she was, Phoebe was still shocked by the sight of Richard when Maddocks showed him in. For that brief moment as he came toward her, he looked for all the world like Stephen. Then he smiled, shattering the illusion.
Phoebe had never found the resemblance between the two as strong as other people were wont to claim, but she had to admit that she was probably more sensitive to their marked difference in expression than to their actual features. Both men had favored their father, Lord Tyneley, who had been a handsome, distinguished man. Stephen’s face had always been kind and open, a quality that had attracted her to him from the very first. Richard’s face, however, usually wore an expression of disdain and aloofness that was so like his mother’s Phoebe had often wondered how anyone could ever have confused the two half brothers. Yet seeing Richard now stabbed her with pain as unbearable as if Stephen himself were standing before her.
She wondered if she could manage to unclasp her hands long enough to offer one to Richard. That fraction of a moment’s hesitation cost her, for Richard moved quickly to envelop her in an embrace instead. It was so typical of Richard, she thought afterward, that his hands lingered just a little too long, and what should have been a chaste, brotherly kiss on her cheek somehow ended up on her jawbone, in the sensitive spot close to her ear. A little tremor of distaste ran through her when he released her, and she wondered if he noticed.
“Ah, Phoebe,” he said with what she had always thought of as his sly look, “ever the prim and proper, eh? Poor sister Phoebe, how are you bearing up?” With a finger, he tilted her chin up, but she refused to meet his eyes. She twisted her head to the side and then slipped away from him, sinking gratefully into the nearest straight chair.
“Won’t you have a seat, Richard?” she asked pointedly. She felt relieved when he did so.
“It has been a difficult time, hasn’t it, my dear,” he began, “although I see you have lost no time in putting off full mourning. My father has been in his grave, what, two weeks at best? Of course, you were in blacks a full year for my brother, were you not, dear Phoebe?”
He had chosen the straight chair opposite her and sat sprawled in it with a practiced nonchalance, one leg crossed over the other. His gaze swept her from head to toe and back up again, resting on her face. Phoebe tried to will away the flush she felt creep across her cheeks.
“I was not expecting company,” she responded faintly.
“I suppose I am hardly in a position to criticize, having missed both the funeral itself and even the memorial service. It is infamous, is it not? Such an amazing thing, the military.”
“I thought you were still in France.”
Richard laughed. “Surprised to see me? Yes, I’d wager Prinny’s royal throne on that.”
“How did you know where to find me?” Phoebe was quickly tiring of trying to maintain a polite front for him.
He paused to look at her, a malicious amusement dancing in his eyes. “It was kind of you to attend my father’s commemorative. I understand the place was packed to the roof beams. It was also extremely helpful. I thought if you were in London you would not stay away. The rest was easy. The Allingtons are your only relatives in Town.”
Phoebe stared at him, thinking now of the man in the park, and the suspicions she’d had that someone had followed her to Lucy’s. “You have been spying on me!”
“I have found it useful to have eyes and ears in Town when I am not able to be here myself. My friends thought you a pleasant subject for surveillance, although they were devastatingly disappointed and quite bored when they discovered how little you go out. You live like a cloistered nun, my dear!”
“Why are you here, Richard?” Phoebe’s voice was tight with her growing impatience.
“Why else but to see to your welfare, sweet Phoebe? I feel a certain responsibility for my poor dead brother’s widow. Did you think I would just let you disappear from my life? Are you going to live here with your sister forever?”
“Yes. No. I don’t see that it is any of your business.” She struggled to keep her composure. Richard was the kind of person who made ferreting out other people’s weaknesses a well-refined art, and she was still working to overcome so many! Her uncertainty about her future and her need to establish some sort of independence were only two.
He smiled his sly smile again, the one she hated. “It has become my business more than either of us would have imagined,” he said smoothly. “I sought your whereabouts purely out of my own concern, I assure you, but I was quite glad that I had when I met with my family’s solicitors. It seems they had no idea where to find you. My dear departed father made you a bequest in his will.”
With this astonishing pronouncement, he reached into his coat and produced a letter, which he handed across to Phoebe. She read it in silence, aware that he was watching her intently.
The letter’s contents filled her with hope. Bless Lord Tyneley! He had left her an annuity of two thousand pounds a year and a modest property outside of London, which he had occasionally used as a hunting box. She was to contact his solicitors regarding the details. Mindful of Richard’s interest, she schooled her features to remain calm, despite her wildly beating pulse.
She had never expected any remembrance from her father-in-law, much less a gift of such magnitude. Figuring quickly in her head, she estimated that the annuity he had left her together with the income she already had would be enough to maintain her in comfort on the estate. Here was the key to independence, dropped generously into her lap! Tears of gratitude welled in her eyes, despite her resolve to show nothing. She was even ready to bless Richard for bringing her this news.
“I can scarcely believe it,” she said, lifting her eyes from the paper at last. “Beau Chatain, to be mine!”
Richard laughed, but there was no amusement in his eyes now. He got up and paced away from his chair. “I could scarcely believe it myself,” he agreed. “I have been using Beau Ch
atain in season for several years now, and I am certain my father was aware of it. Do you want to know what he left me?” The bitterness in his voice warned Phoebe that perhaps she did not, but the question was rhetorical.
“He left me everything in the farthest corners of the country that was not entailed. Of course the title, and everything attached to it, go now to a cousin in Hampshire I’ve never even met! I have a tin mine in Cornwall, a country seat in Northumberland, for God’s sake, a tract of fenland in Norfolk and a farm in the Lake District. If I were to spend any time at any of them, I would never get to be in London at all!”
Phoebe was not quite certain how to respond. Secretly, she suspected that keeping Richard out of London might have been his father’s goal. Richard ran with a notorious group and lost great sums of money gaming. When he drank with his friends, he was prone to very foul tempers. She was just enough afraid of him not to dare say so to his face.
“They should provide you with a reasonable income, should they not, Richard?” she ventured cautiously.
“Oh, aye. The income’s there, but I want Beau Chatain. I’m prepared to offer you twenty thousand pounds for it.”
Was her bright future so quickly gained and lost again? Oh, why did Richard have to want Beau Chatain? How would she know if what he offered was a fair price for the property? What if it was worth fifty or a hundred thousand pounds? Yet, perhaps she would be better off to sell to him and buy another property of her own elsewhere.
It was easy enough for him to offer, but did Richard have the ready available? Could she buy another property if he paid her in portions? As a woman, she might not even be considered a viable buyer without actual cash to wave in someone’s face. Richard was frequently under the hatches, and she doubted his inheritance would change that. The tin mine in Cornwall or the estate in Northumberland could vanish on the turn of a card. She would have to ask Edward to act as her agent. She needed time to think and to consult with advisors.
“I am sorry, Richard. This is so sudden! I hardly know what to say. Give me time to think on it, and allow me to meet with your father’s solicitors.”
A quick movement brought Richard to stand right in front of Phoebe. “You don’t need to think, woman, and I can take care of my father’s solicitors. I’ve made you a fair offer.” He reached down suddenly and grasped her wrist, pulling her to her feet. He loomed over her, standing just inches away. “If you don’t like that offer, consider this. I occupy Beau Chatain lock, stock, and barrel. Every horse in the stable and every servant on the premises at this moment is mine. You’d have a devil of a time getting me out of there.”
He paused thoughtfully. Phoebe used the moment to try to release her wrist from his grip.
“On the other hand, perhaps there is another alternative,” Richard said, ignoring her struggle. “While I was never my brother’s keeper, I think I could enjoy keeping his lovely wife. Perhaps we could share.” He raised Phoebe’s hand to his lips and kissed it.
Phoebe jerked away with a savage motion that caught him by surprise. “How dare you,” she hissed, rubbing the back of her hand against her skirt. “Is that your idea of a jest? I think your battles overseas must have addled your wits. Leave this house at once. If I need to communicate with you, I will do so by letter.”
“I will leave you now, madam,” he said, stalking toward the door, “but you would do well to consider my offer.” He gave her a sweeping bow that made a mockery of the act. “Either of them.”
***
Phoebe was so angry that she could not sit down for several minutes. She paced the carpet furiously, waiting for the rage that surged through her to cool.
“He is insidious! Hateful! Odious! Repulsive!” Not one of the adjectives seemed adequate to express her feelings. She could not remember when she had felt so insulted. Gradually, the urge to throw something waned and her pacing slowed. She sank onto the sofa, only to discover that she was shaking.
Had she forgotten how nasty Richard could be? She had known it well enough when she had lived under the same roof. She had learned to avoid encountering him in hallways or being alone in any room with him. . . . His vile joke went far beyond vulgarity; it was far worse than any of the provocative remarks Lord Devenham was wont to make.
Black as his reputation might paint him, the earl was nothing like the scoundrel Richard was. She knew instinctively that there was really no comparison. Lord Devenham’s remarks might be just as deliberate, but she knew they were meant to tease, not insult. She might feel wary and on her guard in the earl’s presence, but the feeling came not from a sense of alarm, a sense of danger, as she felt with Richard, but more likely from an awareness of her own attraction to him.
Richard’s visit and his unexpected news had pushed the earl momentarily from her mind. He had slipped back in quickly enough, but even thoughts of him could not overcome her reaction to Richard. It was not until she heard the yipping of the new puppy from the sitting room down the hall that she recalled that she still had a bone to pick with Lord Devenham.
His purchase of the puppy went beyond mere remarks. His high-handed behavior had gone too far this time, and the remnants of her anger regrouped around that thought. She jumped to her feet again, her hands balled into fists. She stalked to the drawing room door, pulling it open with more force than was required. It very nearly crashed into Edward’s prized Chinese porcelain umbrella stand before she pulled it shut again behind her.
***
Devenham was sitting in the wing chair engrossed in a book when Phoebe’s knock came on the door. He recognized it as hers at once, although it sounded a bit more forceful than usual.
He snatched off his spectacles and tucked them out of sight between the books on the table beside him before he bid her enter. He was surprised to note how his spirits lifted at the prospect of her company.
Phoebe came in looking more like a storm cloud than a ray of sunshine, however.
“Should we think that we have made you so comfortable here that you feel quite at home, Lord Devenham? Or do you always do exactly as you please, no matter where you are?”
She spoke in a cutting tone he had never heard her use before. Something had upset her deeply, but what? He masked his concern with a display of arrogance. “Dear me, what can I have done this time? Did I refuse to take my medicine again? I can’t seem to remember. It must be something more than that to have put you so out of countenance.”
Phoebe positively bristled. Her anger brought color to her cheeks and a notable brightness to her eyes, confirming his suspicion that there was passion hidden behind her usual gentle manner. He found it quite becoming, although he would have preferred to see it sparked by an altogether different cause.
“You have more than overstepped your authority this time, my lord, interfering in matters that are not your concern,” she accused him. “You have upset the order of things in this household, and undermined Edward and Judith’s authority in their own home.”
“How exceedingly thoughtless of me. Exactly how have I managed to accomplish all that?”
“You purchased a puppy for children who had already been told they were not to have one. It is at this moment cavorting in Judith’s sitting room.”
“Oh, it’s the puppy, is it? Who told you I bought it for them?” She looked so angry that he could see where the expression “looking daggers” came from. He wondered if he should duck.
“It was not difficult to deduce. There is no one else who could have done it. Do you deny it?”
“Not precisely. I did buy the puppy.” He saw no need to mention that he had in fact bought all four of the remaining pups in the litter at the haberdasher’s shop. If his instructions were being followed, the other three were en route to his estates in Rutland and Derbyshire even as he and Phoebe spoke. “But given that I am such a dastardly fellow, why would you think that I bought t
he dog for anyone but myself?”
“Well, I—” She stopped.
Aha. I have you there. He could not help smiling as she looked at him.
“Perhaps you thought you could bribe your way into the children’s affections.”
“As I have not been able to do with you? I see.” He never could seem to stop himself from goading her. “Is it not possible that I thought the pup would amuse me and help to pass the time? Provide me with some companionship?” he challenged her.
She turned away and paced a few steps. He noticed she was rubbing her wrist. “If that is so,” she said slowly, “then you have compounded your error. The dog has already secured its place in the children’s hearts, and Judith’s as well.” She turned to him, her expression pleading. “They will be devastated if you tell them now that the pup is not theirs.”
“Ah, Lady Brodfield. Your compassion is always for others,” he responded. His voice had become rather husky. “I suppose you yourself are quite immune to the charms of a small puppy.”
“No, I am not,” she admitted in a very small voice. He saw the tears spring into her eyes before she spun away from him again.
Damn! He had never meant to make her cry. “I am a bloody thoughtless beast,” he muttered.
He watched her raise a hand to her averted face, presumably to dash away the moisture from her cheeks. As she did, he noticed the red marks on the pale skin of her wrist, which until that moment had been concealed by the edge of her sleeve. Rather shakily he got to his feet and took a step toward her with his weight on his good leg. “What have you done to your wrist?” he demanded sharply.
Both his movement and his question clearly caught her by surprise. For a stunned moment she stood looking at her wrist, then she quickly came to his side.
“What are you doing?” she cried with a little gasp. “You could fall!”
He allowed her to assist him back into his chair, savoring the small pleasure her touch gave him. She did not know he had been working with Mullins to improve his mobility. As she started to withdraw, he caught her hand by the fingertips and drew it toward him.
Persistent Earl : Signet Regency Romance (9781101578841) Page 8