by Louise Allen
‘Indeed.’ He had not touched the cutlery in front of him.
She finished the soup along with the warm buttered roll and the delicate slices of chicken that had been poached in the broth. When she looked at Lord Dereham he had broken his roll and was eating, perhaps a quarter of it, before he pushed the plate away.
‘And a very good cook.’
He answered her concern, not her words. ‘I have no appetite.’
‘How long?’ she ventured. ‘How long have you been sick like this?’
‘Seven—no, it is eight months now,’ he answered her quite readily, those remarkable amber eyes turned to watch the leaping flames. Perhaps it was a relief to talk to someone who spoke frankly and did not hedge about pretending there was nothing wrong with him. ‘There was a blizzard at night and Bess here was lost in it. One of the young underkeepers thought it was his fault and went out to look for her. By the time we realised he was missing and I found them both we were all three in a pretty poor state.’
He grimaced, dismissing what she guessed must have been an appalling search. And he had gone out himself, she noted, not left it to his keepers and grooms to risk themselves for a youth and a dog. ‘After four years in the army I thought I was immune to cold and wet, but I came down with what seemed simply pneumonia. I started to cough blood. Then, although the infection seemed to go, I was still exhausted. It became worse. Now I can’t sleep, my strength is failing. I have no appetite, and there are night-fevers. The doctors say it is phthisis and that there is no cure.’
‘That is consumption, is it not?’ As he had said, a death sentence. ‘I expect the doctors think saying it in Greek makes them seem more knowledgeable. Or perhaps it justifies a higher bill.’
‘You have no great love of the medical profession?’
How elegant his hands were with the long bones and tendons. The heavy signet on his left ring finger was so loose that the seal had slipped round. ‘No,’ Julia admitted. ‘I have not. No great faith, would perhaps be truer.’ The doctors had done little enough for Papa, for all their certainties.
‘You seem to understand that speaking about problems is a relief after everyone pretending there is nothing wrong.’ He looked away from the fire and into her eyes and for a moment she thought the flames still danced in that intent gaze.
Jonathan’s beautiful blue gaze was always impenetrable, as though it was stained glass she was looking at. This man’s eyes were windows into his soul and a very unpleasant place it seemed to be, she thought with a shiver at her Gothic imaginings.
‘Would it help to confide your story in a total stranger? One who will take it to—’ He broke off. ‘One who will respect your confidence.’
Take it to the grave. He was no priest bound to silence, she could hardly confess to her actions and expect him to keep the secret, but perhaps talking would help her find some solution to the problem of what she could possibly do now.
‘My father was a gentleman farmer,’ Julia began. She sat back in the chair and found she could at least begin as though she was telling a story from a book. The hound circled on the hearth rug, sighed and lay down with her head on her master’s foot as if she, too, was settling to listen to the tale. ‘My mother died when I was fifteen and I have no brothers or sisters, so I became my father’s companion: I think he forgot most of the time that I was a girl. I learned everything he could teach me about the estate, the farm, even purchasing stock and selling produce.
‘Then, four years ago, he suffered a stroke. At first there was talk of employing a steward, but Papa realised that I could do the job just as well—and that I loved the place in a way that an employee never would. So I took over. I thought there was no reason why we could not go on like that for years, but last spring he died, quite suddenly in his sleep, and my Cousin Arthur inherited.’
She would not cry, she had got past that. Just as long as the baron did not try to sympathise: she could not cope with sympathy. Instead he said, ‘And there was no young man to carry you off?’
‘I had been too busy being a farmer to flirt with young men.’ He had seen, and heard, enough of her now to understand the other reasons no-one had come courting. She was hardly a beauty. She was too tall. And too assertive, too outspoken. Unladylike hoyden, Cousin Jane called her. A managing, gawky blue-stocking female with no dowry, that was what Jonathan had flung at her. He was obviously correct about her lack of attraction—it was quite clear in retrospect that she had been a complete failure in his bed.
‘My cousins allowed me to stay because I had nowhere else to go, but it was unsuitable for me to take any interest in the estate, they said, and besides, they made it very clear that it was no longer any of my business. Cousin Jane found me useful as a companion,’ she added, hearing the flatness in her own voice. A drudge, a dogsbody, the poor relation kept under their roof to make them appear charitable.
‘But then it changed?’
‘They must have grown tired of supporting me, I suppose. Of the cost, however modest, and tired too of my interference in estate matters. There was a man—I think they intended to make it worth his while to take me off their hands. He did not offer marriage.’
*
A squalid story, Will thought as Miss Prior ran out of words. Those lips, made for smiles, were tight, and she had coloured painfully. It was unwise of her to flee her home, but the alternative seemed appalling and few unprotected young women would have had the resolution to act as she had done. ‘You ran away, eventually found yourself in my parkland and the rest we know,’ he finished for her.
‘Yes.’ She sat up straight in the chair as if perfect deportment could somehow restore her to respectability.
‘What is their name? Someone needs to deal with your cousin. Even if he had not been in a position of trust, his behaviour was outrageous.’
‘No! Not violence…’ He saw her bite her lip at the muttered curse that escaped him. She had gone quite pale.
‘No, of course not. You need have no fear that I might call him out. I forget sometimes that my fighting days are over.’ Damn. And he hadn’t meant to say that, either. Self-pity was the devil. ‘I am not without influence. It would be my pleasure to make his life hell in other ways than by threatening him at swordpoint. Is his name Prior? Where is your home?’
She shook her head in silent refusal to confide. Will studied the composed, withdrawn, face in the firelight. He had never met a woman like her. Even in this state she seemed to have the self-possession of someone older, an established matron, not a girl of perhaps twenty-two or three.
In the candlelight her skin was not fashionably pale, but lightly coloured by the sun. Her hands, clasped loosely in her lap, were like her whole body—strong and graceful with the physical confidence that came from fitness and exercise. She moved, her cuff pulled back and he saw bruises on her wrist, black and purple and ugly. That a woman should be under his protection and yet he could not avenge such treatment was shameful. No, she must not go back to that, he could do that for her at least.
‘I hope your father did not know that his heir would wilfully ignore the expertise you could have shared with him,’ he said at last when a log broke in the grate, sending up a shower of sparks and jerking him back from his bitter reverie. ‘I know all too well the character of my own heir, my cousin Henry. He’ll squander away the lifeblood of the estate within a year or two—that’s all it took him to lose what was not tied down of his own inheritance.’
‘You are estranged from him?’ Miss Prior’s face was expressive when she allowed it to be. Now the little frown between the strongly marked dark brows showed concern. She was too tall, no beauty. One would almost say she was plain, except for the regularity of her features and the clarity of her gaze. And the generous curve of lips that hinted at a sensuality she was probably unaware of.
Will felt a frisson of awareness run through him, just as he had when she had held him in her arms on the bridge, and cursed mentally. He did not need something else to
torture him and certainly not for his body to decide it was interested in women again. If he could not make love with the stamina and finesse that had caused his name to be whispered admiringly amongst certain ladies, then he was not going to settle for second best.
A wife, he had realised, was out of the question. He had known he must release Caroline from their betrothal, but it had shocked him, a little, how eagerly she had snatched at the offer amidst tearful protestations that she was not strong enough to witness his suffering. She was a mass of sensibility and high-strung nerves and he had found her delicate beauty, her total reliance on his masculine strength, charming enough to have talked himself half into love with her. To have expected strength of will, and the courage to face a husband’s lingering death, was to have expected too much.
Miss Prior was waiting patiently for him to answer her question, he realised. Will jerked his wandering thoughts back. ‘Estranged? No, Henry’s all right deep down. He’s not vicious, just very immature and spoilt rotten by his mama. If he wasn’t about to inherit this estate I’d watch his antics with interested amusement. As it is, I’d do just about anything to stop him getting his hands on it for a few years until he grows up and learns to take some responsibility.’
‘But you cannot afford to do that, of course.’ Miss Prior had relaxed back into the deep wing chair. Another five minutes and she would be yawning. He was selfish to keep her here talking when she should be asleep, but the comfort of company and the release of talking to this total stranger was too much to resist.
‘No. I cannot.’ I cannot save the only thing left to me that I can love, the only thing that needs me. My entire world. There must be a way. In the army before he had inherited, and in the time he had been master of King’s Acre, he had relied both on physical prowess and his intellect to deal with problems. Now he had only his brain. Will tugged the bell pull. ‘Go to bed, Miss Prior. Things will look better in the morning.’
‘Will they?’ She got to her feet as the footman came in.
‘Sometimes they do.’ It was important to believe that. Important to believe that he would think of something to get King’s Acre out of this coil, important to hope that the doctors were wrong and that he had more time. If he could only make time, stretch it…
‘Goodnight, my lord.’ She did not respond to his assertion and he rather thought there was pity in those grey eyes as she smiled and followed James out of the room.
The ghost of an idea stirred as he watched the straight back, heard the pleasant, assured manner with which she spoke to the footman before the door closed. A competent, intelligent, brave lady. Will let his head fall back, closed his eyes and followed the vague thought. Stretch time? Perhaps there was a way after all. Unless he was simply giving himself false hope.
*
Do things look better in the morning light? Julia sat up in the big bed, curled her arms around her raised knees and watched the sunlight on the tree tops through the bay window that dominated the bedchamber.
Perhaps she should count her blessings. One: I am warm, dry and comfortable in a safe place and not waking up in another disreputable inn or under a hedge. Two: I am not in a prison cell awaiting my trial for murdering a man. Because Jonathan was dead, he had to be. There was so much blood. So much… And when people had come, pouring into the room as her screams had faded into sobs, that was what they were all shouting. Murder!
And now she was a fugitive, her guilt surely confirmed by her flight. Julia scrubbed her hands over her face as if that would rub out the memories Be positive. If you give up, you are lost… Was there anything else to be thankful for?
Try as she might, there were no other blessings she could come up with. It was dangerous to try to think more than a few days into the future because that was when the panic started again. She had spent an entire morning huddled in a barn because the fear had been so strong that she could not think.
One step at a time. She must leave here, so that was the next thing to deal with. Perhaps Lord Dereham’s housekeeper could recommend a nearby house where she might seek work. She could sew and clean, manage a stillroom and a dairy—perhaps things were not so very bad after all, if she could find respectable employment and hide in plain sight. No one noticed servants.
*
The baron came into the breakfast room as she was addressing a plate laden with fragrant bacon and the freshest of eggs. Her appetite had not suffered, another blessing perhaps, for she would need strength of body as well as of mind. A mercy that I possess both.
‘My lord, good morning.’ Lord Dereham looked thin and pale in the bright daylight and yet there was something different from last night. The frustration in the shadowed amber eyes was gone, replaced with something very like excitement. Now she could imagine him as he had been, a ruthless physical force to be reckoned with. A man and not an invalid.
‘Miss Prior.’ He sat and the footman placed a plate in front of him and poured coffee. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Very well, thank you, my lord.’ Julia buttered her toast and watched him from under her lashes. He was actually eating some of the scrambled eggs set before him, although with the air of a man forced to swallow unpleasant medicine for his own good.
‘Excellent. I will be driving around the estate this morning. You would care to accompany me, I believe.’
It sounded remarkably like a very polite order. He was, in a quiet way, an extremely forceful man. Julia decided she was in no position to take exception to that, not when she needed his help, but she could not spare the time for a tour. ‘Thank you, I am sure that would be most interesting, but I cannot presume further on your hospitality. I was wondering if your housekeeper could suggest any household or inn where I might find employment.’
‘I am certain we can find you eligible employment, Miss Prior. We will discuss it when we get back.’
‘I am most grateful, of course, my lord, but—’
‘Is your Home Farm largely arable?’ he asked as if she had not spoken. ‘Or do you keep livestock?’
What? But years of training in polite conversation made her answer. ‘Both, although cattle were a particular interest of my father. We have a good longhorn herd, but when he died we had just bought a shorthorn bull from the Comet line, which cost us dear. He has been worth it, or, at least he would be if my cousin only chose the best lines to breed to him.’ Why on earth did Lord Dereham want to discuss animal husbandry over the coffee pots? ‘May I pass you the toast?’
‘Thank you, no. I am thinking of planting elms on my field boundaries. Do you have a view on that, Miss Prior?’
Miss Prior certainly had a view on the subject and had left a promising nursery of elm saplings behind her, but she was beginning to wonder if the absence of a Lady Dereham was due to his lordship’s obsession with agriculture and an inability to converse on any other topic. ‘I believe them to be very suitable for that purpose. Marmalade and a scone, my lord?’
He shook his head as he tossed his napkin on to the table and gestured to the footman to pull back his chair. ‘If you have finished your breakfast we can begin.’
Can we indeed! Was the man unhinged in some way? Had his illness produced an agricultural mania? And yet he had shown no sign of it last night. As she emerged into the hall she saw the maid who had helped her dress that morning was at the foot of the stairs, holding her cloak, and a phaeton waited at the front steps with a pair of matched bays in the shafts. Her consent had been taken for granted, it seemed.
Julia closed her lips tight on a protest. Without Lord Dereham’s help she was back where she had been the night before. With it, she had some hope of safety and of earning her living respectably. It seemed she had no choice but to humour him and to ignore the small voice in her head that was telling her she was losing control and walking into something she did not understand.
‘I am at your disposal, my lord,’ she said politely as she tied her bonnet ribbons.
‘I do hope so, Miss Prior,’ Lord Dere
ham said with a smile that was so charming that for a moment she did not notice just how strange his choice of words was.
Chapter Four
Were his words strange, or sinister? Or quite harmless and she was simply losing her nerve and her sense of proportion? Lord Dereham handed her up to her seat in the phaeton and then walked round and took the reins. The groom stepped back and the baron turned the pair down the long drive. They looked both high-bred and fresh. A more immediate worry overtook her concerns about his motives. Could he control them?
After a few minutes of tense observation it appeared that skill was what mattered. As Julia watched the thin hands, light and confident on the reins, she released her surreptitious grip on the side of the seat and managed not to exhale too loudly.
‘The day I cannot manage to drive a phaeton and pair I shall take to my bed and not bother to rise again, Miss Prior,’ he remarked, his voice dry.
How embarrassing, he must have sensed her tension and probably showing a lack of confidence in a man’s ability to drive was almost as bad as casting aspersions on his virility. And, safe as he was in his weakened condition, she had a strong suspicion that Lord Dereham’s prowess in the bedroom had probably been at least equal to his ability as a whip. The thought sent a little arrow of awareness through her, a warning that Lord Dereham was still a charismatic man and she was in danger of becoming too reliant on his help.
She repressed a shudder at the direction of her thoughts: she was never going to have to endure a man’s attentions in bed again. Another blessing.
‘Cleveland bays?’ she asked. Best not to apologise. Or to speculate on the man beside her as anything but a gentleman offering her aid. Or think about that inn bedroom, not if she wanted to stay calm and in control.
‘Yes, they are. They were bred here. Now, Miss Prior, what do you think I should do about this row of tenants’ cottages?’ He reined in just before they reached a range of shabby thatched cottages. ‘Repair them or rebuild over there where the ground is more level, but there is less room for their gardens?’