by Sara Portman
“I only ask because you recall the day so clearly. I assumed it bore some significance.”
Her gaze drifted away then. “He wrote her a letter of dismissal. It was dated.”
“Still,” he pressed. “It was months ago.”
“It was years ago.”
He realized his error, then, in presuming she referred to the past September. “How old were you when your mother left?”
“Eleven.”
“And where did she go?”
She lifted her green eyes to his again and spoke firmly. “London. That’s why I must go to London. I go to my mother.”
“I see,” Michael lied. If she’d known where her mother was all along, why hadn’t she gone before now? Why hadn’t her mother taken her daughter in the first place? Or sent for her? Or arranged for transport to London? Was she to meet her mother at a solicitor’s office? None of it made sense. In his experience stories that did not make sense, were generally untrue. That bit about the housekeeper’s dismissal letter sealed it. She had to have pulled the date out of the air. Liars, he knew, often over-embellished details.
He’d believed her when she discussed her father, but this bit about her mother—it was false. The more she confounded him, the more determined he became to make sense of her.
Thunder sounded and Miss Crawley’s eyes widened. She immediately went to the window. “Do you think the storm is strengthening again?”
How the devil was he to know that any better than she? “I certainly hope not.”
Perhaps it was the frustration in his tone that drew her attention away from the rapidly blackening night. She looked over her shoulder at him. “You are as anxious to reach London as I,” she observed.
“For several reasons, yes.”
He spoke sharply and she understood his implication, for she gave a small, silent nod of acceptance that she was now one of these reasons. She lowered her eyes and he felt a stab of guilt for his insensitive comment. He then attempted to immediately retract the emotion, chiding himself for his weakness. Why should he feel guilt for identifying the inconvenience she presented? He was providing a considerable service in conveying her to London and she was repaying him with dishonesty. When she importuned him in Peckingham, she’d not clarified that she required protection as well as transport, had she?
She had not. She was the one who should feel apologetic.
“You said Mr. Finn served under Wellington. Did you as well?” she asked, stepping back from the window.
“What?” He had heard her question. He simply wasn’t sure why she’d asked it.
“Did you fight in the war?”
His lips pressed into a grim line. It seemed an odd and, frankly, personal, change of topic.
Her explanation was delivered in a rush. “I only wonder about your injury,” she said, “if it makes your journey more difficult. Did you acquire it in service to The Crown?” He considered her carefully, mused upon the fact that she was not entitled to inquiries of her own, and then, to his great surprise, answered anyway. “I was shot, yes. ‘In service to The Crown’ as you say. Or to my father, however one views it.”
“In service to your father?” she asked, glancing down at his leg.
“My father purchased the officer’s commission. Albert was one of the men under my command. He dragged me to safety after I was shot. The bullet was removed, but the muscle was damaged.”
“I am sorry for your injury, my lord.”
“I do not require your pity, Miss Crawley. I am not typically so affected, but days of confinement have taken their toll and I am unusually stiff, making the cane a necessary concession.” He couldn’t fathom why it mattered that she knew that—knew that he was, in fact, a capable person—but for some reason he felt compelled to clarify. As punishment for his vanity perhaps, he became presently aware of the tightness in the back of his thigh.
“I see,” she said.
Michael crossed the room, lowered himself to the chair near the fire, and stretched the offending limb out before him. He faced her, indicating the smaller chair, and she came to sit across from him. He considered this stranger he harbored. She sat primly, hands in her lap. They were small and pale. She was pale enough that as the room darkened, her skin—her hands, face, throat—seemed to reflect the glow of the fire, giving off an unearthly light. Everything about her, even her appearance, seemed impossible to believe.
“Where did your journey begin?” she asked, just as he was about to launch into more questions of his own.
“Yorkshire.”
“It is a long way between Yorkshire and London,” she observed. “Do you travel it often?”
He sensed she was asking questions to prevent him from doing the same, but he provided the answer anyway. “No.”
“Is Yorkshire your home?” she asked.
For one who claimed not to prefer conversation, she seemed rather bursting with it, now that he was the topic. He looked to the fire. Was Yorkshire his home? It was and it wasn’t. He’d been at Rose Hall for three years. He’d brought considerable change there—improvements to the estate, the addition of the brewery. Rose Hall was his in all but one minor aspect. “Rose Hall is my father’s estate,” he said, turning back to her, “but I live there, yes.”
“Rose Hall.” She said it as though she were attempting to imagine it, though he couldn’t fathom how she would. He’d given no description other than its location. “You do not travel between London and Yorkshire on the same schedule as your father?”
Michael couldn’t stop the bitter exhale of laughter that escaped at her question. “My father does not travel to Yorkshire and I am rarely summoned to London.”
In response to his declaration, she tilted her head to one side and peered at him with open curiosity. “Your answers only beg more questions, Mr. Rosevear.”
He met her eyes. “I am familiar with the frustration.”
He won the challenge. Her gaze shifted to her lap before she continued, ignoring his reference to her own lack of detail.
“If your father’s estate is in Yorkshire, wouldn’t he travel there regularly?”
“Rose Hall is not my father’s primary estate.” When Michael had arrived there, the estate had been sorely neglected and the nearby village suffered as a result. He had made changes, returned prosperity to the estate. No one had granted him the authority to do so, but no one had paid attention enough to object either.
“You seem very fortunate to have your father’s acknowledgement.”
Michael scoffed. “I am acknowledged when he finds it convenient.
“You said that before. What do you mean by it?”
Michael didn’t hesitate in informing her. She may as well know for certain that he was not a prize to be caught. He slouched further into his chair, noting the spots of uneven padding as he did. “I mean precisely that,” he said. “I am acknowledged when doing so serves a purpose for my father. There is a pattern to our interactions. I am summoned when I am needed and sent away again when I am not.”
She sat very still, watching him with eerily perceptive eyes. “When you are needed?” she prompted.
Michael obliged her with an explanation. “I told you my father purchased my officer’s commission. He didn’t do so out of duty to his bastard son, I promise you. When my father felt someone should represent the family in the war effort, I was the ideal candidate—recognized but illegitimate, thus conveniently expendable. When I returned,”—he glanced down at his leg—“imperfect, I was banished to Yorkshire in the same manner I was sent away to school as a young boy.”
“Banished?”
He shrugged. “No one wants their by-blows lurking about, do they? Especially not when he has a wife and real son to be concerned about.”
Her expression was careful, but curious. “Is Rose Hall comfortable?” she asked, and he thought
it an odd response.
“Very.” It had been neglected when he arrived but wasn’t so anymore.
“Perhaps banishment is not the worst of all scenarios.”
“Perhaps not, Miss Crawley.” He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees and studied the contrast between her blank, placid expression and her busy, darting eyes. She was full of contradictions—meek then defiant, quiet then curious, pale yet striking. He couldn’t puzzle her out. Her comment made him wonder what sort of worse scenarios she was imagining.
She did not show pity for his complaints and he preferred it. Gaining her sympathy was not his purpose in answering her questions. There was a salient point she was better off to understand. “The significance,” he told her, “is not that I was sent away, but that I have been summoned again. This time to be married.”
This drew surprise from her. “Your father dictates that you marry?”
“My father has chosen her.”
“Why do you allow him to choose?”
He lifted a brow.
Her hands fluttered up from their place in her lap and then lowered again. “It is just that…well, you don’t seem the sort not to have your own thoughts on the subject.”
“I do have thoughts on the subject,” he assured her.
She leaned ever so slightly forward in her chair and he knew she waited to hear.
“My only thought is that I want Rose Hall.”
Her face registered confusion at his words and he explained. “I am wiser today than when my father summoned me to take an officer’s commission in the army. If my father wants something more from me, I will ask for something in return.”
“Rose Hall.”
“Indeed.”
“Can he give it to you,” she asked, “if you are not his legitimate heir?”
“It is not entailed. My father has no interest in it. The generally accepted story is that his grandfather won the property in a game of cards and renamed it Rose Hall so that it seemed to have always belonged to the Rosevear title.”
“So he has given you the family name. You are Rosevear and he is Rosevear.”
“Not precisely. The family surname is Brinley. I am not Michael Brinley.” Rosevear as a surname was simply a made up name—a way of acknowledging a connection, but not a legitimate one.
She nodded, but her eyes held more questions. “There is one part of your bargain I don’t understand. I can surmise why you would want Rose Hall, but why does your father want to choose your bride?”
“For the same reason all members of the aristocracy choose their mates—wealth. He must preserve his by supplementing it. His heir is too young to be married, and he would not align his legitimate son with a merchant’s daughter anyway. And so he offers me. In addition to what she brings to me with the marriage, her father settles an amount on my father and in return they have connections to the aristocracy, even if it is on the wrong side of the blanket.”
“His legitimate son? You have a brother?”
“The future Marquess of Rosevear is currently twelve.” Michael had only met the boy once. He didn’t think of him as a brother, but he supposed he was.
She watched him closely, likely finding the traces of bitterness in his carefully guarded expression. “So you see, Miss Crawley, I am a desirable match for only one woman—my father’s heiress. If I were to marry any other woman,”—he met her eyes, not allowing her to look away—“she would acquire only a penniless bastard who has lost his father’s support.”
She did not retreat from the challenge in his gaze. Instead she straightened her shoulders and said quite calmly and firmly, “It is fortunate, then, that I don’t wish to marry you or anyone else, Mr. Rosevear, as I have already explained.”
Michael found himself smiling at her response, for it was delivered entirely without pique this time. He preferred pragmatism. He didn’t believe her, of course. Even if she had no designs on him, surely she intended to marry at some point. There was no other security for a woman.
He leaned back in his chair and marveled at how, after hours in her presence, he still had no way of anticipating her. “You must admit you’ve not been particularly forthcoming about yourself, Miss Crawley. Your unwillingness to give the details of your purpose only leads my imagination to darker and more fanciful images of the truth.
“Perhaps you are not a gentlewoman bent on forcing me to the altar. Then again, you may not be respectable at all and you mean to seduce me then rob me of all I have. You cannot blame me for my suspicions. You were, after all, discerning enough to make your plea to a man in a very fine coach.”
“I consider neither intent to be respectable, Mr. Rosevear.” Then she blushed, and softened her voice. “And I assure you, I am quite incapable of seduction.”
“Are you?” he asked, causing her eyes to widen in surprise.
Was she? Her modest rag of a dress was no paramour’s costume and she had not flirted with him at any point, but she was rather fetching in a mysteriously haunting way, blush staining her pale cheeks. The firelight flickered in her now uncertain green eyes, giving them flashes of gold and amber. He realized one benefit of having her in his room was that she would remove her bonnet and it occurred to him that he very much wanted to see her hair without the hat.
“As neither of us possesses any seductive intent, Miss Crawley, perhaps it is relevant that we discuss sleeping arrangements for the evening.”
She swallowed and managed to lose the frightened mouse expression his mention of seduction had inspired. “There is no need for discussion. I shall sleep by the fire.”
“On the floor?”
“On a blanket.”
“A blanket that is lying on the floor.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“That is your plan?”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Yes.”
He sighed. “The trouble with your plan, Miss Crawley, is that I am not an ass.”
She blinked.
“I cannot consider myself a gentleman of any sort if I sleep in the bed and require you to sleep on the floor next to the dog.”
That caught her attention. She immediately dropped her eyes to where the dog lay on the floor near his chair. Then she looked at the space immediately in front of the fireplace, making an unveiled assessment of the distance between these two locations. She lifted her attention to Michael again. “I shall be perfectly comfortable in front of the fire.”
Damn. Michael sighed heavily and pushed himself up from his chair. “I shall sleep on the floor. You shall sleep on the bed.”
She shook her head and rose as well. “Thank you, but no. I get quite cold at night and will be more comfortable near the fire. It truly is my preference.”
Michael pursed his lips. “Are you usually this stubborn, Miss Crawley?” She had refused to even say the words ‘on the floor’ as though calling it ‘near the fire’ would make it more palatable.
“I am not being stubborn. Only honest. It is my preference to sleep here.” She opened her hand to indicate the space at their feet.
No it wasn’t. No one preferred to sleep on the floor. There wasn’t even a rug. But if she insisted upon stubbornness what was he to do? “Very well, Miss Crawley,” he said, shaking his head. “You may help yourself to as much of the bedding as you would like. I will make do with whatever is left.”
She nodded and walked around him to the bed. She peeked under the drawn up quilt, presumably to assess the condition and quantity of the bed linens. Then she efficiently flipped the top of the quilt back. She quickly folded it in half and then quarters before draping it over her arm. She took one of two pillows that rested near the headboard. “This is all I will need.”
She returned to the spot in front of the fire and he moved away, clearing the space for her. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he watched her as she unfo
lded the quilt and refolded it lengthwise, thus to provide both cushion underneath her and warmth above. She shook it with a snap and bent forward to lay it on the floor between the chairs and the fireplace. She set the pillow at one end of the blanket before placing her hands on her hips to briefly survey her makeshift sleeping pallet.
Michael walked to the bed and saw that she had left him a thin coverlet that would be more than sufficient, as he was usually too warm in the night. He unbuttoned his frock coat and removed it, draping it across the side of the bed that would remain unused. He did the same with his buff-colored waistcoat and untied his cravat. When he glanced back at Miss Crawley, he found her watching him, her bonnet removed and resting on the chair upon which she had recently sat.
Her hair was very auburn—darker in shade than he would have guessed given the paleness of her skin. He wondered how long it might be and how she would look with it down around her shoulders. Even still knotted at her nape, the effect of having it fully uncovered brightened the green in her eyes and the contrast of her dark lashes.
They stood a moment, watching each other, before she averted her gaze. She pushed her bonnet aside and sat on the edge of the chair to remove her shoes. Then she straightened her skirts, lowered herself to the floor and quite neatly slid into the pocket she’d created with her quilt.
Michael sat on the bed and removed his own boots. He pulled the hem of his shirt loose from the waist of his trousers. He left both garments on, considering that he should offer her the coverlet as well, given how overdressed he was for sleeping. He didn’t, though. He walked to the room’s one table and blew out the candles there before returning to the bed, pulling back the coverlet, and stretching himself out for the night.
He peeked at Miss Crawley as he did so. She had turned on her side, facing the flames. When he lay his head on the pillow and closed his eyes, he saw her still. He decided her coloring was appealing, even if it was unconventional. She was far from buxom, but as he’d watched her thin and nimble form move about the room, he’d decided he rather liked her shape as well. And she’d been intently watching him as he removed his clothing.Damn it. She was capable of seduction, even if not overtly so. She had not flirted with him or touched him. But then there was nothing so alluring as a mystery was there? Bollocks. It seemed a part of him rather hoped her intent was seduction. The fleecing may well be worth it.