Not even the mention of her breasts could cool his rising ire. Damn it, but would she not listen to reason? He knew she was smart—smart enough and brave enough to find her way to Cornwall, against all odds. She’d waited for two long days to try and locate a guide, so she at least understood the risks of being alone. So why was she insisting on doing something so dangerous now, without stopping to think it through? Was it because the house was not as large or grand as she remembered and she was battling the sting of her pride?
Or was it because she felt like he was still trying to somehow force her hand?
“You can’t stay in a house like this,” Thomas protested. “It isn’t safe.”
“Because I’m a woman?” She threw her hands up in the air again. “You sound just like Reverend Wellsbury. I have to stay in a house like this. I don’t have a choice. I can’t afford to stay in town another night, and unlike you, I don’t have entailed property at my disposal or an income I can depend on.”
Thomas scowled at her. Was she truly so blind to the privilege she enjoyed? “You toss out excuses rather easily, but need I point out your father is a viscount? Yesterday you mentioned a dowry. Shall I guess the amount? Five thousand?” At her scowl of annoyance, he pressed on. “Ten thousand?” He knew he had her when she began to bite her lip. “Admit it, Lucy. You are scarcely the impoverished chit you are claiming to be.”
Her hands gripped the fabric of her skirts. “If you think a woman’s dowry is her own,” she ground out, “then you are delusional. It will only be delivered into the hands of a husband, a fact my father has made more than clear. And given my plain appearance and contrary notions about life and love and everything in between, any man who offers for me will most assuredly only be interested in putting his hands on my dowry.” She drew a ragged breath. “Not on me.”
A strange, telling silence descended. He wondered if she even realized just how much she had revealed. She’d been claiming from the day he met her that she didn’t want to marry, that she intended to be a spinster like her aunt, but this confession suggested a deeper, underlying doubt. And not only a doubt in men and their intentions: a doubt in herself.
His eyes lingered on cheeks flushed pink with agitation, the rise and fall of those lovely breasts. Christ above. Plain? Was that really how she saw herself? Had she any notion of how she looked at the moment, her wet dress molded to her curves?
Her chin tilted even higher. “So no, Lord Branston. I am not going with you, and I have no intention of selling this property. You can’t imagine what Heathmore represents to me.”
“Then tell me,” he said, more quietly now. “Convince me why I should leave off. Tell me you can handle this house, manage its repairs and upkeep. Promise me you won’t sell it, and I will walk away and leave you in peace.”
“Heathmore means my freedom. Independence.” She choked on a sob and charged at him, her hands making hard contact against his chest. “A life where I don’t ever have to marry, a life I would make on my own terms, not dictated by my parents or a husband.”
He stood firm, letting her abuse him. “I understand such a sentiment more than you think.” Something of her panic, her resolve, reminded him of another young woman, once upon a time. “My sister—”
“You don’t understand.” She pushed again, and this time he yielded, stumbling back toward the open front door. “I can’t muddle through life the way my father expects me to, and I can’t be what my mother would make me!” She was shouting now, nearly shaking the rafters. “I can’t face the Season they have planned for me or marry a perfect, titled stranger just because it is the ‘done’ thing! God knows I have tried through the years, but that is a shoe that will not fit. My aunt wanted me to have Heathmore because she knew from a single, childhood visit that I was different, that I would never fit into a life someone else made me. And I can’t sell the house she intended as my salvation.”
Now, finally, they were getting into the heart of the matter. She was determined, he’d give her that. But had she really thought this through? She was fixated on a path she knew nothing about, nothing beyond the hazy image she held of Miss E as a saintly do-gooder and a kindly aunt. But he’d known Miss E well enough to recognize the restlessness that lay inside her. The woman had never been content. Always floating from project to mad project as if she were trying to fill some endless hole in her life. Always searching for something: company, grand causes, something to ease that ache in her heart.
“I can understand a need to make your own life,” he said, wincing as another hard shove knocked against his chest, pushing him ever backward. “But are you meant to be alone in that future?”
“Yes,” she said, panting now. “My aunt did it. You live alone, to hear Mrs. Wilkins tell it.”
“Yes. I live alone. And that is why you should listen to me when I say you should reconsider your plan.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she spat. “To force me to sell Heathmore, and run back to London with my tail tucked between my legs.”
“Damn it, this isn’t about Heathmore! It’s about you.”
She stopped, her eyes wide with surprise, her chest heaving. “Of course it’s about Heathmore.”
“I mean it, Lucy.” He shook his head. “Do not rush into a decision like this.” He dragged a hand through his damp hair, needing to make her understand. “Do you know what it means to be truly, completely alone?” he demanded. “Sitting in a room for hours—for years—with naught but the crack of a fire in your ears? To feel the weight of your own thoughts, second-guessing every decision you ever made, every person you ever disappointed, until you think you might go mad from it?” He threw up his hands. “Your aunt understood it. I understand it. It isn’t for the faint of heart, Lucy. You can trust me on that.”
There was a long, awkward moment of silence. She stared at him.
He stared back.
“How can I trust you?” she whispered, her eyes welling with tears. “I can’t even trust you to use my name properly, much less tell me the truth.” Her voice was a catch in her throat now, and the sound made him want to reach for her. “My name is Miss L now, not Lucy.” She gave a new, hard shove, and suddenly he was standing outside the door. “And I can’t trust anyone.”
LUCY SHOVED THE door closed and turned the shiny new key in the lock.
Her heart was thumping with emotion—emotion that, admittedly, had little to do with Heathmore Cottage. Oh, God. Oh, bugger it all. Had she really just confessed to Lord Branston she was afraid a husband would not want to touch her?
And more to the point . . . was it true?
Until that moment, she hadn’t realized just how much of her obsession with this house and her fears for the Season were tied up in her own confused feelings about her future. She had claimed—loudly and often—that she didn’t want to ever marry, that she wanted to be a spinster and live life by her own rules, the way her aunt had. But in that mad, miserable moment when she choked it all out to Lord Branston, it had all become clear.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want a husband, as she had been claiming.
It was that she wanted that husband to want her.
And that, she realized with a sudden sob, was the crux of everything. She clapped a hand over her mouth, trying to hold it in. That was why she didn’t want a Season, why the thought of setting up a spinster’s house in a crofter’s cottage in Cornwall held such appeal.
But if the thought of a loveless marriage frightened her, she was also scared to find herself eventually wanting things like children, a desire to share her world and her worry with someone other than felons and orphans. Would she feel empty without them, the way Lord Branston implied she would? She was suddenly frightened she would never be happy, no matter which decision she made.
She swiped at her traitorous eyes and stalked to the front window. Brushing aside a faded curtain, she peered out. He was shrugging on the oilskin she had thrown at him. It had smelled of him when he draped it around
her shoulders on their walk up. She had closed her eyes when he’d done it, breathing him in, trying to believe he wanted the best for her.
But that was just wishful thinking, it seemed.
There were too many reasons to distrust him.
In the drizzle, she could see him offer one last glance toward the door. He took a hesitant step away, then another, until his damp, dark head disappeared through the rocks. How long she stood there, she couldn’t say, but eventually her emotions began to calm and her tears to dry. With it, the chill of the house began to seep through her clothes. She pulled the wet shawl off her shoulders and turned to face the room she had just fought so hard to win. Already the shadows were lengthening, and not only because of the dreary day.
It was starting to get late.
And it was definitely getting colder.
As she knelt in front of the parlor’s fireplace and sorted through how she might start a fire, she realized with dismay she didn’t know how. Much like laundry, she’d never even considered learning how to do it. Could she really be stymied by such a basic, primal skill?
Give her a pen and paper and she could change the world, but start a fire? She hadn’t a bloody clue.
She searched her memory. How did the servants light fires at Cardwell House? They seemed to always be carrying around buckets of embers. That implied that new fires were started from old ones. But there was no fire in this place. No scent of smoke either, suggesting there hadn’t been a fire in a very long time.
And bloody hell. Even if she found a match, there didn’t appear to be any wood.
“Don’t panic, Lucy,” she muttered into the ominous silence of the house. “You just need to look around.” She stumbled into the next room, determined to search every nook and cranny for matches and wood. But things seemed even less encouraging here. She was standing in a kitchen, with a wobbly old table and a few chairs. Dust coated the table, and the floor crunched menacingly under her boot, two years of dirt and neglect impossible to ignore. There was no stove to speak of but she saw a cooking hearth that appeared to be stuffed with hay or dried grass. She sniffed, searching for evidence of a recent fire, but all she received was a nose full of ammonia for her trouble.
Worse, something rustled in the grass.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
Lucy turned and ran out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her and breathing hard. She hadn’t believed it, not really. She’d thought her father and Lord Branston must have made that part of the story up, like a twisted fairy tale meant to keep children from wandering into the woods. But stories didn’t rustle about in the grass, nor urinate in hearths either.
She placed a trembling hand over her heart.
She wasn’t the Westmore sibling who was terrified of rats.
She wasn’t.
And as long as the dreadful beasts stayed on their side of the house, everything would be fine.
She somehow pulled herself together, her wet skirts dragging the floor and leaving a dirty smear behind her. She knew she needed to get dry, but how could she in the insistent damp of the place? She fumbled out of her skirts and bodice, laying them across the back of a chair. But she soon discovered that dry clothes were going to be in as short supply as firewood: everything in her bag was soaked through. Even the snuff she’d bought from Mr. Jamieson was clumped inside its tin. “Right then,” she muttered, squaring her shoulders. “Surely there is something dry to wear in this house.” A blanket, perhaps. Or a curtain.
She would find it, even if it meant braving . . . She shuddered.
No, if it meant braving the rats, she’d rather stay cold and damp, thank you very much.
Shivering in her damp chemise, Lucy armed herself with an old moth-eaten broom and completed a cursory inspection of the rest of the house, her trepidation rising with each new discovery. She found the half-finished roof and the rain-slick floors that lay beneath. The rotting floorboards in the upstairs bedrooms. And the closet full of old, musty linens, which had at first caused a hopeful leap of her heart, only to have those hopes curdle as she realized the cotton had all been chewed through by rats.
Through it all, the outside light grew dimmer through the windows, until finally she had to make her way back to the parlor by feel rather than by sight.
She was cold. Wet. Hungry.
Wrong.
The realization formed slowly, growing teeth along with the night. With it came an acute embarrassment. She sank to the floor, her face in her hands. Lord Branston had warned her the repairs weren’t finished. Her own inspection had just confirmed the worst: everything he had said about Heathmore was true.
Oh, damn her indomitable pride, and damn her compulsive nature besides.
She’d known the cottage was miles from town, and now the sheer isolation of Heathmore began to close in. She couldn’t make her way back down that treacherous, slippery path tonight without a light to guide her. She wasn’t sure she could do it even with a light in hand.
She’d never felt so alone in all her life. She thought of her family, back in London, and the bustle and efficiency of Cardwell House. Oh, but she had taken that life for granted. Lord Branston had been right when he claimed she was spoiled. She’d imagined she hated the wealth surrounding her, when in reality she hadn’t realized how fortunate she was.
Was this what Lydia meant that day when her sister implied that she was naive to the ways of the world? She looked around the small room, with its simple furniture and unlit hearth. If Lydia were here, she would probably know how to start a fire.
Hell, Lydia would probably know how to catch a rat and turn it into dinner.
But all she herself knew how to do, really, was write letters to prisoners.
She blinked back tears as she thought of the grand causes she had supported in London, and how her father always tolerated them with a bemused shake of his head. They did seem like petty diversions now, compared to the reality of life. She’d devoted herself to them for the wrong reasons, wanting to feel important, rather than wanting to help as an honest expression of gratitude for all she had.
What had she been thinking, charging so blindly to Cornwall, so ill-prepared for it all? And just how had Aunt E done it, managed to live here, all by herself? How had she found firewood, in a landscape barren of trees? How had she fetched water, and cooked without a stove? It was far too dark to read her aunt’s diary for clues, and so far she’d uncovered no details in her reading that pointed to the day-to-day workings of Aunt E’s life.
She thought of the pages she had read, the vivid descriptions of her aunt’s adventures. In point of fact, Aunt E hadn’t written much about her life here at Heathmore Cottage at all. Instead, she’d written—nearly incessantly—about the people of Lizard Bay.
Was Lord Branston right? Was it possible her aunt hadn’t been as content a spinster as her diaries implied?
At that moment, an eerie moaning sound reached through the cottage walls to find her ears. Whooooooo. Whooooooo.
“Who is there?” She sat up, her heart clawing a hole in her chest.
Whoooooo.
Her mind summoned Mrs. Wilkins’s earlier warning about ghosts and magnified it tenfold. She didn’t believe in ghosts. But something rustled in the darkness to her left.
And, oh God, that sound came from inside the house, not out of doors.
What if . . . what if the vandals Lord Branston had mentioned were staying here after all? Her imagination took hold then and went further.
Vandals wielding knives.
Or worse . . . vandals wielding rats.
The rustling came again, louder now. Something brushed by her leg, and she opened her mouth in a long, terrified scream.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
She was a victim of her own stupidity, bound to stay in this house tonight, or die trying.
And it was beginning to look as though dying was a distinct possibility.
From the Diary of Edith Lucille Westmore
N
ovember 22, 1827
Living alone on the edge of a cliff is not for the faint of heart.
Sometimes, especially when the season shifts, the wind moans terribly, reminding you that warmer homes and warmer beds await in town below. I shudder to think of the coming winter, when I will be confined to Heathmore by ice on the path more often than not. I would move to Lizard Bay in a heartbeat if the bloody vicar wasn’t still there, his smugly handsome face glaring down at me from the pulpit. But moving to town for the winter would be akin to admitting Reverend Wellsbury was right.
And I would rather die than ever admit a thing like that.
Chapter 17
The bloody girl was going to die.
At the sound of her scream, Thomas launched himself out of the shelter of the rock where he’d been hunkered down, resolved to a miserable, sleepless night. As he sprinted toward the dark house, he cursed out loud. There was no wisp of smoke curling from the chimney, no glimmer of light in any window. She was going to break her goddamned neck, puttering about that treacherous house with no lamp.
And it was going to be his fault for bringing her here.
The moaning wind battered its way through his oilskin, but not even the thought of his warm, dry manor on the west side of town was enough to deter him from reaching her. She was trapped inside the cottage, cold and terrified and impossibly naive.
And that meant he couldn’t yet leave.
Thomas threw his shoulder against the front door, cursing his foresight in repairing it so well. As his body made impact, she screamed again. He slammed his shoulder against the door again, then again. Finally, the weathered wood splintered around the new lock, and then he was tumbling inside, blinking, ready to defend her to the death.
There was another shrill scream, followed by a foul curse that would make a sailor blush, and then an acrid cloud of cloves and tobacco enveloped him.
He twirled into the darkness, grappling for both air and understanding.
The Spinster's Guide to Scandalous Behavior Page 20