by Mary Balogh
“Thank you,” she said. “That would be very good of you.”
He nodded and finally looked away from her to take his leave of the Reverend Puddle. A moment later he was striding away to mount his horse again.
“A formidable gentleman,” the vicar observed.
“Yes,” Eve agreed. Also, very clearly, a man of his word. She realized that his offer to help her this morning and his offer now to stay an extra day in order to deliver a eulogy at Percy's memorial service tomorrow had nothing to do with simple kindness. His life had been saved and he felt himself in Percy's debt. He had given Percy his word that he would protect her, and in the absence of any other way of serving her, he would stay to say uplifting things about Percy for her comfort and her neighbors' edification.
She was grateful to him.
AIDAN DID NOT CONSIDER HIMSELF AN ELOQUENT man. Certainly he had never before delivered a eulogy. He had attended so many burial services for his men and fellow officers that it was depressing to think of, but the regimental chaplains had always said all that needed to be said.
“Captain Percival Morris once endangered his life and suffered severe wounds in order to save my life,” he began when it came time for the eulogy, facing the impressively large congregation gathered in the pretty, typically English village church.
Miss Morris, dressed all in gray, sat in the front pew, her black-clad and -veiled aunt beside her. The young blonde-haired woman who had been teaching the children on the lawn at Ringwood was there too, as was the housekeeper, who would have made an excellent sergeant if she had been of the other gender, Aidan had thought when he saw her march down the aisle behind her mistress. Most of the congregation was dressed respectfully in black. Perhaps some of them wondered why Miss Morris of all people was not.
“I was with Captain Morris when he died,” he concluded after delivering his planned speech for a few minutes. “His last thoughts were of his sister. He asked me to bring her the news of his passing myself. And he asked me to beg her not to wear mourning for him. It is in honor of that plea that she wears gray today. We must all feel honored that we knew so courageous a man, one who gave of himself unstintingly in the service of his fellow countrymen and of the country itself. We must show our respect for him by directing it toward the sister whom he loved to the end. Ma'am?”
Aidan made her his stiffest, most formal military bow before returning to his seat. She sat straight-backed and dry-eyed and as pale as a ghost, he noticed. Mrs. Pritchard and several other members of the congregation were sniffling into their handkerchiefs.
He did not pay much attention to the rest of the service. The church bell tolled mournfully as the service ended.
He shook hands with the Reverend Puddle and congratulated him on a tasteful and dignified memorial service. He was wondering if this would be an appropriate time to have a word with Miss Morris or if he should more decently wait yet another day, but she took the decision from him by approaching him herself. She was holding out a gloved hand to him.
“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “I will always treasure the memory of all you said about Percy, most of which I did not know before. And I will always remember your kindness in staying another day for my sake.”
“It was my pleasure, ma'am,” he said, taking her slim, warm hand in his.
“How is your batman today?” she surprised him by asking.
“Much better, I thank you, ma'am,” he said.
“I am pleased to hear it.” She nodded. “A number of my friends and neighbors are coming back to the house for tea. Will you come too, please?”
It was everything he could have hoped for. The chances were that there would be little opportunity for a private word with her, but perhaps he could create the opportunity. He still did not know what he would say to her, though, what he would ask, how impertinently he would probe.
Before he could answer, someone else stepped forward, bowing and smiling and clad from head to toe in unrelieved black. Even the handkerchief dangling from one of the man's black-gloved hands was black.
“A speech of affecting sentiment indeed, my lord,” he said to an astonished Aidan. “I could scarcely hold back my tears. My mama positively could not. What a comfort it must have been to poor Percival to have an officer of such illustrious lineage with him at his death—your father was the late Duke of Bewcastle, I understand, and your brother is the present holder of the title. I do thank you from the bottom of my heart, my lord, for condescending to honor us with your presence this afternoon.”
“Sir?” Aidan said with distant hauteur.
“Colonel,” Miss Morris said, her expression hard-eyed and tight-lipped, “will you permit me to present my cousin, Mr. Cecil Morris.”
“This is a great honor indeed, my lord,” the man said, bowing and scraping and simpering. “And if I might also present my mama? Where is she?” He turned his head to look among the groups of people gathered in the churchyard. “Now where did she go? Ah, there she is, conversing with Mrs. Philpot and Miss Drabble.” He waved the handkerchief from one uplifted arm.
Aidan looked at him with considerably more attention. This was the man who was to inherit Ringwood? He was small and plump with a puffed-out chest and an important, bustling air. And obsequious to a fault. Miss Morris's cousin. He did not, Aidan noticed, speak with even a trace of a Welsh accent. Quite the contrary. His accent would make even Bewcastle sound provincial.
“Colonel Bedwyn can meet my aunt at Ringwood, Cecil,” Miss Morris said. “He is coming for tea. At least, I believe he is.” She looked inquiringly at Aidan.
“Oh, you simply must come, my lord,” Cecil Morris added, abandoning his attempt to summon his mother. “I urge you to honor us with your company, as humble an abode as Ringwood Manor is compared to the ducal seat, I do not doubt. Lindsey Hall, I believe? Mama will be gratified beyond words.”
“Thank you, ma'am.” Aidan bowed to Miss Morris and ignored her cousin. “I will be there.”
He strode off in the direction of the inn. He would have his horse saddled and ride over. Lord help the poor woman if she was going to have to live out her life in company with her cousin and his mother once the anniversary of her father's death had passed.
Was this what had so concerned Captain Morris?
EVE HAD BEEN FEELING KINDLY DISPOSED TOWARD Colonel Lord Aidan Bedwyn after church. By the time he left Ringwood after tea she despised him and was heartily glad she would never see him again.
Her neighbors were attentive. Almost all came back to the house and all spoke to her with kindly sensibility about the service and about Percy. Serena Robson, James's wife, sat beside Eve for almost an hour, holding her hand much of the time, chafing it, assuring her that this day was a dreadful ordeal for her but a necessary one, that once it was over she would feel better again.
“And you know,” she said earnestly when there was no one else with them, “you are perfectly welcome to come and make your home with us, Eve. James agrees with me that nothing would suit us more.”
Eve glanced across the room at James. Poor man, it was something he would surely hate. But she was touched by Serena's kindness. The two of them had been friends since Serena's marriage to James five years before. But friendship had its limits.
“I do not even want to think beyond today, Serena,” Eve told her. “But thank you. You are most kind.”
Truth to tell, she had been finding it hard all day to think rationally at all. Even the memorial service had been hard to concentrate on, much as she had tried. Only the colonel's eulogy had captured her undivided attention.
Time was running out.
She might have saved herself and everyone else under her care from this predicament if only she had married sometime during the past year. She had had several offers. But she had not considered any of them seriously. She had been waiting for John. Oh, foolish, foolish—she was no longer convinced that John was coming back at all. Even if he did, he would come too late to save her servant
s and friends.
She could scarcely believe that she was doubting John. Against all reason, perhaps, she had loved and trusted him through fifteen long, silent months.
No one knew about John, not even Aunt Mari. John, Viscount Denson, whose father, the Earl of Luff, had strictly forbidden the match when her father had proposed it to him, was with the diplomatic service and currently at the embassy in Russia—or perhaps by now he really was on his way back to England. He had promised to come straight home when he returned in March and finally make their secret betrothal public. By then, he had told her, he would be a respected diplomat, an important person in his own right, and his father would be powerless to stop him from marrying the woman of his choice. They would marry before the summer was out.
Eve smiled wanly as yet another of her neighbors bent over her to commiserate with her and comment on the beauty of the memorial service. Everyone was so very kind. How good it was to have friends who cared.
Where was John now, at this precise moment? She had no way of knowing. They had not written to each other even once during the fifteen months of his absence—it was not at all the thing, after all, for a man and woman to correspond when they were not married or at least officially engaged. At least, that was what she told herself during the first long months when she did not hear from him. She had been unable to write to him herself as he had given her no address. But surely, she had thought more recently, though she had tried to suppress the thought, he could have found some way of communicating with her without damaging her reputation. If only he would come, she thought. If only she could look up now to find him standing in the doorway, blond and handsome, with his usual air of ease and confidence. But all she saw when she looked up was Colonel Bedwyn standing listening to Cecil.
Surprisingly, the colonel made no apparent effort to get away from him. Eve had almost laughed at the snub he had dealt Cecil on the churchyard path and was disappointed that he would now bolster her cousin's sense of importance by giving him his undivided attention. Nevertheless, she was glad to be relieved of the duty of being sociable to the dour colonel herself. She would have still felt in charity with him if the afternoon had not ended as it did.
She had gone down to the terrace to see James and Serena Robson on their way. She waved to them as they drove away, feeling suddenly very weary and very lonely. She turned to go back into the house, but Cecil and Aunt Jemima were just stepping out. Cecil's coachman was bringing up his carriage to take them home. Colonel Bedwyn was with them. Apart from the nervous little smile Aunt Jemima darted her way, they completely ignored Eve just as if she were invisible.
“Now this,” Cecil said with an expansive gesture of one arm to indicate both the house and the park, “is quite inadequate as a gentleman's seat. It might even be called an undistinguished rural heap. A marble portico with Greek-style sculptures and pillars and steps is what I have in mind. That will impress the eye, would you not agree, my lord?”
Eve looked incredulously at the ivy-clad beauty of the front of the house. She waited for the colonel's cutting set-down of such a tactless comment in her hearing.
“Both the eye and the visitor,” the colonel agreed, his voice languid with aristocratic hauteur. “Such an improvement to your property cannot fail to elevate you even further in the esteem of your peers, sir.”
Cecil swiveled about. “And the driveway must be widened and paved,” he said. “There is scarce room for two well-appointed carriages to pass each other along it. Some of the trees will have to go.”
Her precious, ancient trees, Eve thought, aghast.
“An admirable idea,” Colonel Bedwyn agreed. “They are only trees, after all. Of far less significance than a gentleman's carriage.”
Cecil observed his surroundings with a self-satisfied air until his carriage obstructed his view by drawing up in front of him.
“It has indeed been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lord,” he said. “And a pleasure and an honor for Mama, too. Perhaps you will visit us some other time when you are in Oxfordshire, after I have had a chance to make Ringwood into an estate worthy to entertain the son of a duke. Perhaps you will join me for a spot of shooting. Perhaps even the duke, your brother . . .” He allowed the preposterous suggestion to trail away.
The colonel inclined his head and offered his hand to Aunt Jemima, who was so flustered for a moment that she did not seem to realize that he was intending to hand her into the carriage. She clasped it and scurried up the steps when she did realize it.
“Eve?” Cecil finally deigned to take notice of her before climbing in to take his place in the carriage. “I shall return in four days' time to take up residence here. I trust you will not make any vulgar display of protest. You know how easily Mama's nerves become upset.”
“Good day to you, Cecil,” she said. “Good-bye, Aunt. Thank you for coming.”
Her aunt raised a black handkerchief to her eyes after smiling with watery tenderness at her.
“How are Becky and Davy?” she had whispered soon after they had arrived at the house, with anxious glances to both sides. But she had chosen her moment poorly—Cecil had been bearing down upon them. Aunt Jemima had smiled and nodded vaguely and remarked that she must get the recipe for the pound cake from Eve's cook.
When the carriage drove off, Eve was left standing on the terrace beside Colonel Lord Aidan Bedwyn.
“Ma'am,” he began, “if I may—”
She did not wait for him to finish. Even the sound of his voice made her bristle with indignation. She turned and walked into the house without a backward glance.
CHAPTER IV
I AB BUCH BETTER, SIR,” ANDREWS SAID. “I CAD HAVE US on our way by sud-up.”
Aidan stood in his inn room, his back to his batman, and closed his eyes. Oh, the temptation! After a few moments he uttered—aloud—every ugly, filthy, obscene, blasphemous word in his considerable vocabulary.
Andrews sniffed.
“Blow your blasted nose,” Aidan commanded him.
Andrews obeyed, sounding like a cracked trumpet as he did so.
“My civilian clothes,” Aidan ordered, beginning to undo the buttons of his scarlet coat.
“Your riding clothes?” Andrews asked.
“No, not the riding clothes, blast it,” Aidan said, shrugging out of the coat and tossing it over the back of a chair for his batman to deal with later. “Did I ask for riding clothes?”
“Do, sir,” his batman conceded. “I thought perhaps you had decided to leave todight.” The nose-blowing had obviously done nothing to clear his nasal passages.
“You thought wrongly,” Aidan said curtly. “I will let you know when I plan to leave this infernal inn.”
Less than half an hour later he was wearing civilian clothes again—white shirt and neckcloth, blue superfine form-fitting coat, cream waistcoat, buff-colored pantaloons, and white-topped Hessian boots. He was freshly shaved. He was still in as foul a mood as he had been half an hour earlier—fouler.
He still could not quite believe what he had learned from Cecil Morris, whom he had milked for information with consummate ease simply by flattering the man with his attention and his questions and his unqualified approval of every asinine answer. He would have been far happier throttling the little weasel.
Old man Morris must have been a pretty piece of work, Aidan thought contemptuously as he sat down to dinner in his own room—he was in no mood to put in an appearance in the taproom. When he had failed to persuade his daughter to marry any of the socially superior men he had presented her with, he had tried to exert some control beyond the grave.
According to the will he had written shortly before his death, Morris had indeed left everything to his daughter for one year only before it was to pass to her brother or, in the event of his prior demise, to her cousin. But he had also dangled a juicy carrot before her face. She could retain her inheritance for the rest of her life if she married during that year.
There were four days
remaining until the first anniversary of Morris's death.
Cecil Morris was about to inherit. But though he had apparently peppered his cousin with marriage proposals when it had seemed in his interest to do so, he was no longer prepared to be bothered with her now that he did not need her. She was to be turned out of the house in four days' time. Cecil Morris neither knew nor cared what would become of her.
News of the death of her brother, then, had come as a double blow to Miss Morris two days ago. There was no doubt that his death had upset her in a thoroughly personal way. But the other implication of that death must at least have contributed to the gaunt look she had been wearing ever since. Apparently Captain Morris had left everything to her in his own will and had even signed papers legally relinquishing all claims on the Ringwood property to his sister during his lifetime. Unfortunately, his generosity had gone for naught. He had died before he had any claim on Ringwood and therefore any right to dispose of it as he wished.
In four days' time Miss Morris was to be homeless and, presumably, destitute. Her father had not even left her a dowry or a pittance on which to live.
Aidan dismissed Andrews after he had finished his meal and then entertained the empty room with a deliberate repetition of every nasty word he had uttered earlier in Andrews's hearing. But he felt no better for the venting of spleen.
Four days.
Captain Morris had been right to worry about her, then. She did indeed need help and protection. And Aidan had solemnly sworn to provide both—no matter what. During his ride back to the inn from Ringwood he had pummeled his brain for ideas on what he could do for her. But even before arriving he had realized that there was only one answer. The trouble was, he did not like it at all—and that was surely the understatement of the century!
And there were only four days left.
Even though Miss Morris had pointedly snubbed him before he left Ringwood this afternoon—and who could blame her after that ridiculous scene with Cecil Morris she had witnessed?—he was going to have to persuade her to receive him again and listen to him and do what he suggested.