"So kind (achoo!) of you (achoo!)" Henrietta was whispering to the earl, who bent politely forward to hear her. "Oh, look, (achoo!) Margaret," she said when she spied her niece, who would have slipped out again if her aunt were not so quick, "the earl has brought me these lovely (achoo!) flowers. And even"—she stroked her rooster fondly—"a worm for Laz."
"A worm?" Miss Tolliver, not wishing to carry her feud with the earl on in front of her aunt, cocked an eyebrow at the earl, who had the grace to appear contrite even as he rose to place a chair for her. "I thought Laz had had his fill of worms last night."
"Oh, no," Aunt Henrietta assured her gravely. "He was feeling decidedly peckish." Busy stroking the rooster, she did not see the grin that passed involuntarily between the earl and Miss Tolliver at her choice of words. Catching herself, Miss Tolliver sobered immediately, but she knew her moment to be lost, and replied quite civilly when his lordship asked if she had gotten out to enjoy the day.
No, she told him, she had not. She had been busy unpack—er—with other things. Aunt Henrietta looked at her in concern and told the earl that Margaret was wont to exercise every day, whether riding or walking. "The sunshine is good for her," Aunt Henrietta said seriously, unaware that a person who spent the night in the rain looking for worms was hardly an authority on good health. "You must get out, Margaret! Really (achoo!) you must."
Her niece promised that she would do so, and the earl, seeking an advantage, suggested that she might like to go driving with him. "I know you like to ride, Miss Tolliver," he told her, "and I would be delighted if I might take you driving. Perhaps, if you like, I could even teach you to handle the ribbons."
Miss Tolliver had reached forward to soothe her aunt's covers, but her hand stilled suddenly and she shot him a sideways look before repeating, in an odd voice, "Teach me, my lord?"
"Why, yes," the earl said, misunderstanding her tone. "I would be happy to. There is nothing to be afraid of, I promise you."
Miss Tolliver straightened and batted—yes, positively batted—her eyes at him while replying in a too-bright voice, "Why, how kind of you! But perhaps you are one of those gentlemen who does not like his horses driven by a lady."
The earl was one of those gentlemen, in general, but, he assured her gallantly, in this case his horses would be honored. And, he added, speaking his thoughts aloud, there would be no danger of his animals coming to grief while he was in the carriage.
"But—" Aunt Henrietta whispered. Miss Tolliver patted her hand.
"Yes, yes, Aunt," she said. "It is time you got some rest. We are going."
She rose, and the earl, perforce, rose with her, following her to the door as she asked him in a properly hesitant voice if they might go driving that very afternoon. Happily the earl agreed, and Miss Tolliver told him she would be with him as soon as she changed her dress. Thus it was that when she met her brother in the hall a half hour later and he asked where she was going, she told him with breathless pleasure that the earl was going to teach her to drive, and passed on to where that gentleman stood awaiting her at the door.
Charles, who found the earl's cellars and the earl's servants infinitely superior to his own, and who had no objections to the earl paying his living expenses indefinitely, was glad to hear she and the earl were going out together, and said absently that that was nice before limping on. He had taken several steps before the full meaning of her words sank in, and then he turned to stare after her departing figure in surprise.
"Margaret Marie!" he called, but the just-closed door prevented her answering him. Aloud he asked the hallway how that could be, when in Yorkshire his sister was known as a notable whip.
Once in the curricle the earl, who knew how many women were nervous around horses, determined to do nothing to frighten or startle Miss Tolliver. With that intention in mind he drove at such a sedate pace that the groom, hanging on behind, wondered what had come over his master, even venturing at one point to ask if his lordship was feeling quite the thing. Upon being assured that the earl was fine—never better—Hobson gave himself up to a deep and thoughtful scrutiny of the countryside, never letting on that the scenery that interested him the most was the earl's and the lady's heads. He listened in stony silence as the earl explained the art of driving a team in detail, and in astonishment as the lady—who had visited the stables one day when he was present and who had asked extremely knowledgeable questions about the earl's horses, calling his team of grays and the chestnuts "proper high bred 'uns"-—asked a number of naive questions, exclaiming over the earl's prowess and grasping his arm, as if in fright, when he let the team break into a gallop. At once the earl brought them to a fast walk again.
When they had driven some miles, the earl very kindly asked Miss Tolliver if she would like to try her hand at the ribbons and, after a display of maidenly fear and confusion, and a great many reassurances on his part that there was nothing to it, and that he was right there to help her if need be—along with the information that he felt they had gone far enough for the freshness to wear off the team—Miss Tolliver was convinced to take the reins. She then sat up straight, touched the leader with her whip and caught the thong in a manner reminiscent of the best of the Four Horse Club, and drove the horses well up to their bits for several minutes before slowing them to a walk again. With a sweet smile at the thunderstruck earl and his grinning groom, she handed the reins back to Giles saying, "I do believe you are right, my lord. There is nothing to it."
The earl took the reigns automatically but dropped his hands, allowing the team to break into a canter. Miss Tolliver told him kindly to mind his horses.
He did, but continued to stare at her for some minutes—a stare that was met by her wide-eyed look of inquiry.
"You knew how to drive all along!" he said at last.
"Why, your lordship," she replied, in that sweet-shy voice that he realized now should have warned him of her hoax. "How can you think so? You must know I was able to do so only because I had such a good teacher."
The earl agreed that was so, asking who the teacher had been.
"Why, your lordship—" she began again, but he told her he could no longer be taken in. With a cheerful grin she shook her head and said nothing.
"Was it your brother?" he asked at last.
That did bring a response from her as, with a scornful "Charles? Charles couldn't drive a wheelbarrow through a gate with any dependence!" she said that it had been her father who taught her.
"He must have been a notable whip," the earl said, and she agreed warmly that he was, whereupon they rode in silence until their return to Willowdale, the earl only speaking as he helped her down from the curricle. Then, his hands on her waist, he detained her a moment to say, with the whimsical smile that always seemed to interrupt her breathing, "You know, my dear, I said it once before, and I think it more true now than ever."
Miss Tolliver cocked her head expectantly, then gulped as he raised her gloved hand to his lips and kissed it gently, smiling into her eyes. "My brothers really did kidnap an actress."
Chapter 25
The week of her aunt's illness passed quickly for Margaret. In fact, it passed into a second week and then a third. There was a change in the tenor of her days—a change born in upon her gradually as she realized that all of the earl's family was working together to see that she and the earl spent time with each other.
The first time it happened, when she and Peter were participating in one of their illicit games in the billiards parlor, she thought it must be an accident. So intent was she on her shot that she did not hear the earl's entrance, and when Giles's arms slipped around her and his voice, warm in her ear, said, "No, no, my dear. You must hold the cue like this," and he illustrated his point with his hands over hers, she had been aware only of that odd breathlessness again, and her joy at hitting the ball under his tutelage.
When he joined her and Gillian on their morning rides, she had at first found nothing amiss; even when Gillian had, a
fter several days, begged off with talk of attending to his studies, she had refused to think too deeply about what was happening. Truth be told, the earl was a much better companion than Gillian, whose neck-or-nothing riding style left little time for enjoying the beauty of the day.
The earl, however, was never averse to pausing for a view of some particularly fine horizon, or to stopping when she spied some fragile wildflower heretofore unseen. In fact, the gentleman considerably surprised her when he was able to identify almost all of the specimens she found so intriguing and, when her surprise became apparent in her face, to murmur almost apologetically, "I am sorry to disappoint you, my dear, but I am not really such a frivolous fellow as you think me. Botany happens to be a particular interest of mine."
Of course Miss Tolliver then must cry out at his belief that she considered him frivolous; her opinion was far from it. Actually, she found him quite—quite—
"Quite?" he pressed, watching her face closely as she strove to find the right word. It did not come, for with a firm grip on heart and tongue she finished the sentence with a laugh and the words "abominable, for teasing me like this."
"Abominable" was not the word the earl wished to hear, and with it he could not be content.
But the big change—the one that finally made Miss Tolliver face up to what was occurring, came in the evenings when John forsook his love of chess in favor of a game of whist with the earl, Miss Tolliver, and his grandmother, even going so far as to partner his grandmama at the table, nobly bearing up under her constant—and pungent— criticisms of his ability to play. And if that were not enough, there were even nights when the countess, the most inveterate of whist players, vowed that she was "not in the mood, and would just sit by the fire with a nice little cup of tea'' while Miss Tolliver and the earl played piquet.
It wasn't that Miss Tolliver minded; she enjoyed her games at piquet with the earl more than she cared to admit even to herself, for in him she found a skilled and worthy opponent who neither asked for mercy—as her brother Charles so often did in so many irritatingly indirect ways— or gave it, as many men made a show of doing whenever they were playing with a lady. She and the earl, both normally cool-headed and determined to be in control, were quite evenly matched, and the excitement of the luck of the cards, and trying to outguess what her opponent would hold, increased her enjoyment of the evenings.
But as she sat one night before her mirror combing her hair, feeling its long, heavy fullness caress her neck and back, she stopped abruptly and, pointing the comb at her image, said severely, "You're being seduced, Margaret Marie, and you must be careful." Her image looked gravely back at her, nodding, and she sighed. "The great problem, my dear, is that you like it. And you know it cannot go on."
Still resolute in her determination to leave Willowdale when her aunt grew well enough to travel, Miss Tolliver told herself that it could not hurt to enjoy the inhabitants of the hall (not especially the earl, she thought, although she knew it was not true) to the fullest while she was with them, just to provide kind memories to warm herself on the cold nights in Yorkshire. She did not question too deeply why those nights seemed colder than ever now. . .
And so Miss Tolliver at last gave herself up to the full enjoyment of all Willowdale had to offer. Knowing she was leaving, knowing there could never be anything between the earl and herself, knowing that he was just being kind, and appreciating his kindness, she allowed herself to talk and laugh and tease with him without constraint. And if, she told herself, that meant a pang or two (or four thousand or more) later, it was worth the enjoyment now.
The only uneasiness Miss Tolliver felt as one week lengthened into three was over her aunt's continued illness. Although the sneezes and red nose had long disappeared, as the doctor had promised they would, Aunt Henrietta remained firm in her assertions that Lazaurus and she still had a cold, were not feeling well, could not possibly travel all the way to Yorkshire, and, in fact, should not even be out of bed.
To that end she spent a great many days snuggled under the covers relishing both the blood-curdling books so thoughtfully provided by the countess and the unending supply of chocolates that were the gifts of the earl, and not sneezing until Margaret noticed she was doing better, whereupon her answer was always a loud "achoo!"
Lazaurus, too, seemed content to perch either upon the windowsill, in Aunt Henrietta's knitting bag, or on the turned wooden foot of the bed, and if his continued good temper was the result of a bewildered footman's constant forays into the garden in search of beetles and worms, Miss
Tolliver was not to know. And she did not know, right up until the day she walked into her aunt's bedroom to see if that lady had any needs before she, Miss Tolliver, joined the earl for a drive. In the act of pulling on her gloves, Margaret stopped stock-still at the sight of her aunt, waltzing about the room, while the approving Laz sat on the bedspread providing an odd little tune for a dance of his own.
"Aunt Henrietta!" Miss Tolliver said, her eyes wide. Her aunt turned inquiringly at the voice, and stopped suddenly.
"Margaret!" Face and voice revealed signs of guilt. "I thought you had gone!"
In the midst of explaining that she had just stopped by to check on her aunt before leaving, Miss Tolliver's words ended abruptly and her gaze grew accusing. "You're not sick!"
"Oh! Well!" Her aunt suddenly placed one hand to her forehead and another to her stomach as she tottered carefully back to the bed. "Why, of course I am. Very sick. Amazingly so." She lifted the covers and slipped under them.
"No, you're not!" Miss Tolliver said. "You were just dancing!"
"Dancing?" Aunt Henrietta opened her eyes wide. "My dear, did you think I was dancing just now? That wasn't it. Not at all."
"Oh?" Miss Tolliver's face was polite but skeptical, and she stood, one hand cradling the elbow of the arm that had a hand supporting her chin and the fingers tapping her cheek. "Then what were you doing?"
"Why, I was just—just—" Inspiration struck. "I was just demonstrating something for Laz!"
"Oh?" Miss Tolliver was politer still. "And what were you demonstrating, Aunt Henrietta?"
"What—was I—demonstrating?" The words were repeated falteringly, and the old lady gazed around the room for help. Several moments passed, in which her niece stood suggestively tapping her foot, but at last inspiration struck again.
"I was demonstrating," she said with great dignity and a hand extended to smooth the feathers of her favorite bird, "what would happen to Lazaurus if he were to rise from his bed before he is ready. He would be quite disoriented, you know; going in circles, weaving this way and that. What you thought was waltzing, Margaret, was really my interpretation of a disoriented—"
"Deranged, perhaps," her niece suggested politely. "—chicken!" Aunt Henrietta ignored the interruption and stroked the rooster's feathers again. "And now, dear, I think you had better go. For after all the excitement, Lazaurus—perhaps even I—oh, let us say, we—are in dire need of a nap."
"Aunt Henrietta—" Miss Tolliver began, but that good lady showed all the signs of being asleep already, her head turned and her eyes closed in a way that made it clear there would be no further conversation now. With slow steps and biting her lip, Miss Tolliver moved toward the door, there to turn and, discovering her aunt watching with one eye open, to pause and inquire in the most bemused tone possible, "Aunt Henrietta, who was it that told you—that is, Lazaurus—that you both are still sick?"
"Why, the doctor, of course!" her aunt replied, surprised. Then she thought a moment. "Or was it the dowager countess?"
Miss Tolliver's "aha!" was almost as sharp as the sound with which she shut the door to her aunt's room, and she moved swiftly down the hall, a martial light in her eye. The dowager countess indeed! That meant they all—every one of them, from Peter to Gillian to John to Giles to the countess— had been part of a conspiracy, enlisting her own family as well. At least, she told herself fairly, they had enlisted Aunt Henriett
a. Sir Charles, happily ensconced amid the earl's port and the earl's chef's way with a joint of beef, would have needed no convincing. She should have seen it all before, but she, she told herself severely, had been too busy woolgathering, pretending nothing had changed when of course it had. . .
Her eyes were stormy as she hurried down the stairs, and her chin came up as the front door opened and Gillian walked in, smiling at her pleasantly. His smile faded as he looked closer at her face and, scenting danger, he told her that he was in a great hurry because he had a great deal of studying to do.
Miss Tolliver told him that his studying could wait, adding with biting sarcasm that since he, too, had thought so for months, he must not try to gammon her now that he was a reformed character. He strove in vain to tell her how that wounded him, in fact—
She cut him off with a curt "Where are your brothers?" and he goggled at her in surprise.
"I say, Miss Tolliver," he began, growing gradually aware—for he was never a quick study—that her behavior was most unusual. "Has something occurred to upset you?"
"Upset me?" Her lip curled, and she glared up at him in a way that made him feel she was much taller than she really was. "Oh, no Gillian, what could upset me? How could it upset me that there is a conspiracy, right under this roof—right under my nose!—and that I am the one being conspired against? How could it upset me that—" She grew aware that he was hedging off, and reached out to grasp his lapel, glaring up at him again.
"Where did you say your brothers are?" she demanded. Hastily he told her that John and Peter were in the library while Giles was awaiting her in the blue salon, along with their grandmother.
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