He planned to give a feast and toast his farmers with the potent apple cider that their orchards produced. Duty fulfilled, James then intended to submerge himself in months of uninterrupted sexual impropriety to purge his mind of the war he had fought and would still be fighting if a well-placed bullet hadn’t stopped him.
In less than a week he would be a satisfied man, one whose body was soothed by a woman’s attentions, not battered by every bump in the country road he’d insisted his coachman take. Why had he demanded this detour? he wondered as the carriage approached a small stone bridge.
He turned his head, remembering the reason with a jolt of surprise. To his right stood what centuries ago had been a majestic Tudor house. His father had admired the manor since James was a boy, and James had inherited the late duke’s appreciation of traditional English architecture.
Was it abandoned?
Could he purchase it for his mistress? She wouldn’t care for it, he decided. The house needed extensive repairs and would be too isolated for a lady accustomed to the bustle and excitement of London. Elora loved her parties. She thrived on the gossip of infidelities and jewel thefts and bankruptcies that brewed in the beau monde. She had attended more balls and routs than any woman he had ever known. She sought constant entertainment. He needed sex. Still, the steeply pitched roof and dormer windows intrigued him. Perhaps it would suit one of his aunts.
He noticed a hawk perched on the branch of one of the ancient oaks that ringed the manor. A bird of prey, the hawk kept its sight on an object in the garden below. What it was James couldn’t see. But he saw something else.
Was that a woman standing at the bottom of the garden? He banged hard on the carriage roof and opened the door before a footman could attend the task. He set his boots to the dirt road as the wheels stopped rolling.
The hawk remained motionless. He could not help but wonder again what innocent creature it had in its sights. He walked down a sloping path buried in leaves and passed a once-grand gatehouse.
“Your Grace?” said his coachman, a musket under his arm. “Shall I accompany you? I’ve heard stories about this house.”
“Tell me one.”
The coachman squinted up at the roof. “Dangerous women abide within. Women who bend men to their will.”
James grinned. “What is it they make their victims do?”
“Wicked things, from what I gather.”
“They sound like women I might like. Now I am compelled to continue.”
“And as for me?”
“Let me sacrifice myself first.”
He wandered into what remained of the original Tudor garden, a riotous shambles that threatened to consume the house. James predicted that in another year only the chimneys would rise above the thicket of thistle and rose, weed and bramble. From what he could see, it was only a matter of time before the roof collapsed into heaven only knew what lay beneath.
He’d never seen a caretaker or an occupant in the few times he’d driven by. But then who could find a human being in this overgrown mess? Hard to believe that the grounds had once been designed in geometric knots and patterns as precise as a chessboard.
He felt a sudden whimsy to ask his land agent about purchasing the place. Despite his coachman’s warning, the only rumor James could recall about the manor was that four spinsters lived within. Perhaps they would be amenable to an offer.
He blinked. The beguiling figure in white was half-hidden beneath an unsightly trailing arbor of honeysuckle vines. She stood completely still as if caught in a misdeed. Or was it a statue of a Greek goddess? He would have noticed such an anomaly on the Tudor estate before.
He cleared his throat, pushing an intrusive thorn out of his face. “Good afternoon,” he called out in a gruff but pleasant voice. “Allow me to introduce myself.”
The goddess came to life. Before he managed another word, she bent, scooped up a wriggling ball of fur, and fled up the path. James couldn’t decide whether she was a maidservant or a gentlewoman. She moved too spryly for a spinster. How irritating that she ran at his polite inquiry.
Ladies usually chased after James, especially when they discovered he was an eligible duke with nothing better to do than indulge their whims.
“Please,” he said, quickening his step. “All I wish is a few words with you.” Which might not be entirely true, but he couldn’t be certain of his own motives until he convinced the woman to give him a chance to introduce himself.
There was something about her that reminded him of the past, of sweet days lost and unappreciated. But that was fancy, the influence of the manor’s charm. She didn’t appear to feel this absurd connection.
She muttered something under her breath and gripped her skirt with her free hand. He decided she was desperate, indeed, if she’d display her stockinged ankles to make an escape. He noticed that she had nicely shaped calves. Perhaps she ran away from men all the time. He could have pounced on her in two masterful strides. Or so he was convinced until he walked into an obelisk concealed behind a wall of hollyhocks.
The impact should have knocked him to his senses. The woman clearly knew the garden’s snares as well as how to elude persistent gentlemen.
Her white sleeves and skirt fluttered out, a taunt and a symbol of innocence at the same time. He felt like Hades pursuing Persephone.
He wouldn’t be surprised if everything in the garden began to wither, and he found himself sitting with her in the underworld, trying to justify his position.
“Miss! I’d like to speak to you about the manor house.”
He reached out for her, not certain which part of her person he would grasp. She looked fetching from behind. But then she dodged another obstacle that he hadn’t anticipated. She seemed to fly through the heavily overgrown garden.
He stumbled over a sack of weeds and stones. Perhaps it was the dead body of the last visitor. He regained his balance but lost the advantage.
“Stop!” he said in his ducal voice, to no effect. Either she disrespected the peerage or she was too upset to acknowledge his rank.
Dangerous women abide within.
Women who bend men to their will.
“Wishful thinking,” James muttered.
A heavy beat of wings in the air drew his gaze to the sky. The hawk flew over the house. Its sudden ascent disturbed a family of jackdaws that appeared to reside in one of the manor’s numerous chimneys.
The woman jumped a small urn filled with geraniums and disappeared into the house. A bramble bush snagged his trousers and slowed his pace.
“I have a sword, you half-wit!” a female voice from inside the manor shouted.
Then the door slammed, the sound reverberating in the garden. A swarm of angry bees circled his head.
He stood, breathing hard. He half expected the rosebushes to grow claws and hold him captive. “Another time, then,” he said; he was no longer merely interested but enthralled. “I’ll send a message ahead. Make proper arrangements.”
He heard the crunch of boots from behind the overgrowth. He followed a weed-choked footpath to the side of the house.
“Pardon me,” he said to a tall gate smothered in strands of verdant ivy. “Is anybody home?”
He tunneled his hand through the vines and made a peephole. The ivy concealed a back garden of such well-maintained Tudor symmetry he believed he’d discovered a secret paradise.
The illusion soon perished. A rheumy eye met his. A voice that could belong to either a beast or human being snarled, “Begone! All and sundry creditors and other trespassers will be roasted on a spit!”
He drew himself upright. It took more than a reclusive lady and an ill-tempered gardener to force a duke to retreat. “I wish to speak to your master or mistress about ownership of this property. And I shall have none of your surly impertinence.”
The gnome hurled a handful of di
rt over the gate in answer to his demand. James glanced up, realizing he had an audience. The lady in white stared down at him from a lozenge-shaped oriel window of what he guessed to be a hall in the upper story. Her face blurred behind the leaded glass. He noticed other indistinct figures standing around her like guardian angels.
“Your Grace?” his coachman called from the gatehouse, a footman at his side. “Have you been assaulted?”
James gave a laugh and brushed the dirt from the shoulders of his greatcoat. “Hardly. Let’s return to the carriage. And be careful where you step.”
“I did try to warn Your Grace about those women.”
“Yes, you did. Danger comes in various forms, doesn’t it?”
The coachman looked back in curiosity at the house. “Some of those forms are quite attractive, if you’ll forgive me for saying, Your Grace.”
“How can I not forgive you when we share the same thought?”
He ambled back through the garden. The bees had disappeared. Rose-tinted shadows enhanced the enduring beauty of the house. Its outward simplicity deceived the unknowing. The Tudor manor represented the essence of England, of what James had fought for, what his younger brother and so many other valiant soldiers were fighting for now.
In the false twilight it didn’t seem to matter that the windows lacked a few panes, or that time had peeled strips from the ornate wood framework.
He had coveted this house for years. He wanted to learn its secrets. He wanted to know about the woman who lived inside. He thought he should explain that he hadn’t meant to frighten her, that he wasn’t a man who went about accosting young ladies on their property.
His arm throbbed, a welcome diversion from finding reason for his behavior. Soon enough Elora would arrive to make him forget all about Tudor houses and reclusive women. He desperately longed to give himself over to a season of pleasure before he settled down and found a wife.
Chapter 2
The soft but protective arms of Ivy Fenwick’s two younger sisters dragged her across the threshold. The door slammed in the stone archway on the face that Ivy had not even seen. His persistence told her all she needed to know about his character. He had shouted to the world what he wanted. Every man who braved the garden had one objective in mind: taking possession of Fenwick Manor.
“Who was that?” her youngest sister, Lilac, whispered. Lilac’s light hair shone in the darkness of the hall. Heavy drapes covered the belowstairs windows. It was too early in the day to waste a candle. The housekeeper kept them on a strict allowance.
The sisters hadn’t always scurried into the house like mice at the approach of male callers. Once the clip-clop of horses paraded across the bridge by hopeful gentlemen had added a measure of excitement to their afternoon tea. With their father the Earl of Arthur’s approval, a young gallant might stroll through the enchanting gardens with one of his lordship’s daughters. All four Fenwick girls had been well dowered and never lacked for company, even though Rosemary tended to sneak off with a book half the time and Lilac had walked with a limp ever since her accident.
But Lilac was fair and intrepid and laughed when her gait slowed her pace. She had fallen in love with a neighborhood boy when she was fifteen. He had never come back from the war; three years ago his parents had died. She insisted that she would be with Terence one day and that she didn’t need a courtship until then.
“Who was that?” Lilac asked now, her voice low with dread. Even Lilac recognized danger when it stood at the door.
“I didn’t stop to ask his name,” Ivy said, disengaging herself from her sisters’ custody. “It’s obvious he came to put a lien on the property.”
“But you said we paid the last of our debts.” Rue Fenwick hadn’t taken her dark blue eyes from the door. She had coal black hair and fair skin, and was bitter to Lilac’s sweet.
“I thought we had,” Ivy said. She bent to put down the puppy squirming against her neck. “Go, you morsel of trouble. You don’t know how close you came to being snatched up by that hawk. Quigley has to fix that hole under the gate.”
Rosemary, the second eldest of the Fenwick sisters, trudged down the stairs. “What is all this commotion?” she asked with a resentful frown.
Ivy assumed Rosemary had been at her desk. Ink stains of various shades smudged her sleeves. Her hair hung in a messy plait over her shoulder. But then the sisters never received callers these days. Why should they dress for company that never appeared?
“I assume it was another land agent hoping we’d sell the house at a pittance to pay off one of Papa’s debts that has just come to notice. I don’t think he was a bailiff.”
Rosemary leaned against the heavily carved balustrade. “He arrived in an expensive carriage for a debt collector.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it parked on the bridge from the hall upstairs.”
Ivy ran toward the staircase, Lilac at her heels. Rue stayed below to guard the door, although what her delicately boned sister thought she could do to ward off a man of such a determined nature, Ivy didn’t want to speculate.
At the top of the stairs, she and Lilac followed Rosemary through a dark bedchamber into a narrow hall. The watchful stares of ancestors, Welsh and English, followed their progress to a window where the drapes tumbled to the floor in fragile condition. No one dared touch them. The last maid to do so had mummified herself in moldering silk.
Ivy glimpsed a large black carriage disappearing down the road from the bridge.
“That was not a creditor,” Rosemary said. “But he might have been something worse. What did he look like?”
Ivy sighed. “For the last time, I didn’t dare stop to find out. He missed capturing me by mere inches. Details might be important to a writer, but a woman running for her life doesn’t care whether the man chasing her has blue eyes or brown.”
Lilac rubbed a smudge of dust from the windowpane. “He had gray eyes, I believe, and a noble face, although it looked not overly pleased when Rue and I slammed the door on it.”
“The jackdaws took off from the chimney as if the house were on fire.” Rosemary was studying Ivy now in concern. She usually needed a good hour after writing to return to the world. “And I haven’t heard Quigley threaten anyone to stay away from the gate in years. How did you outrun the man, Ivy?”
Ivy guided the others away from the window. “I didn’t. The garden slowed his chase. I knew the pitfalls and thorny places. He came up against every one.”
“You shouldn’t have gone outside in view of the road.” Rosemary pulled a foxglove blossom from Ivy’s hair. “I’m almost finished with the story. Can we hold out for three more months?”
Ivy stared through a chink in one of the windows to the back gardens of Fenwick Manor. The front of the house might deceive the unwanted visitor into believing that chaos ruled. But behind the back walls, the land was immaculately maintained by her sisters and Quigley, the gardener, and displayed geometric beds, fruit orchards, and knot parterres that remained true to their original Tudor design.
As did the manor house, for all it was crumbling into decay. Time held its breath within the walls. Few structural changes had been made since the first Earl of Arthur had built the house over three centuries before.
Rue’s voice startled her from her musings. Her sister had climbed the stairs so quietly that Ivy hadn’t heard her approach. “Didn’t you say that most of our bills have been paid?”
“I thought they had. Even so, the roof can’t hold up through another barrage of storms. And I won’t make our only footman clean the flue again and get stuck in the chimney. We have to do something besides hide.”
“But what?” Rue asked. Her hair was blacker than Ivy’s, her nature more secretive than her eldest sister’s intense sensibility.
“We’ll decide after supper,” Ivy said.
“After Rosemary reads h
er latest chapter,” Lilac added, bending to pick up the foxglove bloom from the bare floor. “These are poisonous, as you know. I wonder we shan’t have a sick puppy on our hands tonight.”
“Or an unwanted visitor,” Ivy thought aloud. She felt vulnerable after that man’s pursuit, caught outside with only herself and Quigley to blame. “To be truthful I don’t care that society believes living in seclusion has turned us into spinsters, or that it has forgotten we even exist. It rarely crosses my mind what others think of us.”
“It seems hard to believe that we were once popular and had our dance cards filled at a masquerade ball in London,” Rosemary said, not truly wistful, either.
“I’ve never been to a ball,” Lilac offered. “I’ve forgotten how to dance. Besides, I was never good at it.”
“You play the virginal beautifully,” Ivy said, smiling at her. “That’s worth more than being able to dance.”
“Except that we sold the virginal last year,” Rue reminded her. “I do miss listening to Lilac’s music before going to bed. One can play an instrument by oneself. You don’t need a partner to accompany you.”
Lilac frowned. “But you need someone to appreciate what you play.”
“And that’s why you have sisters,” Ivy said, hoping a little cheer would counteract their ominous mood.
For the first time in years a persistent stranger had stolen a glimpse into their secret world. Her sisters might not have admitted it aloud, but Ivy knew they must have been feeling as shaken up by the intrusion as she did. Then and there Ivy took a silent oath to do whatever was necessary to keep possession of Fenwick Manor.
Chapter 3
It was no secret to the staff of Ellsworth Park that the duke had returned home to indulge in a liaison. He had written a fortnight earlier to alert his estate manager of his impending arrival. The letter was a mere formality. His servants kept abreast of the master’s affairs as reported in the gossip papers. His housekeeper followed the details of his intimate life with embarrassing pride.
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