She pressed a hand to her chest. “And if I become a great writer, Marlowe will publish my novel. If he does, I’ll have something that’s mine, wholly mine, an accomplishment I can hold in my hands and say, “Yes, I did this.” That’s why I’m pushing you so hard to write your book and for you to teach me everything you know so that I can become a great writer like you. For once in my life, I want to succeed at something.”
He dropped the picnic hamper and caught her up by the arms, hauling her against him with enough force that she sucked in a breath of shock. “That is the biggest load of codswallop I’ve ever heard,” he said savagely. “Like I told you before, you’re a deuced pretty woman. God, do you think I’d ever agree to write again if all I got for my trouble were the kisses of an ugly woman? Give me a bit of credit for my taste in women, would you?”
She opened her mouth, but he gave her no chance to speak. “If I hear you disparage yourself for those luscious freckles of yours or that gorgeous hair one more time,” he went on, “I’ll go off and pound my head into a wall. Not to belittle your sister’s charms, but I’d guess those marriage proposals were not in spite of her successful business, but because of it. Most men, as I said before, are selfish, and some, I’m sorry to say, also happen to be greedy and lazy. There’s many a man out there who’d be happy to take over a successful business through marriage rather than hard work.”
He paused just long enough to take a breath, then went on, “As for accomplishments, I’ve known dozens of accomplished women. I’ve been surrounded by ’em all my life, and yes, they can sew and sing and draw, but the amount of intelligent conversation most of them have to offer would fit in a thimble! Furthermore, you’ve been living in a ladies’ lodging house, earning your living and writing your books. Governess? Dressmaker’s assistant? The reason you don’t have a line of suitors out your door is simple. You don’t meet any men. Being an author won’t change that, by the way, so best to stop grousing about it. You’ll spend most of your time alone. And while we’re on that subject, let me add that you’re already a fine writer, and you don’t need some publisher to bind your words up in a leather cover to prove it. But if you feel you need to be published in order to be a truly accomplished woman, don’t worry. Talent aside, a writer only needs two things to become published: tenacity and gumption. Believe me, petal, you’ve got both of those qualities in abundance!”
With that, he stopped, but Daisy was so astonished that she couldn’t think of anything to say. Sebastian had just described her and her situation in a way she’d never considered, and it took her several seconds to think of a reply. “Thank you,” she finally managed.
He let go of her, seeming almost embarrassed by his outburst. “You’re welcome.”
He picked up the hamper and started walking again, but she didn’t move. Instead, she stared after him, and slowly, she began to smile, happiness welling up inside her like sunshine. Lucy, for all her accomplishments, successes, and suitors, had never been the recipient of a speech like that. Daisy found a great deal of satisfaction in that.
Chapter 14
It is not enough to conquer.
One must also know how to seduce.
Voltaire
Sebastian walked down the path at a rapid clip, his boot heels crunching on the gravel, Daisy’s words still ringing in his ears.
So that I can become a great writer like you.
The knowledge that she was pinning such high hopes on him and the success of this venture scared the hell out of him. God, if he could teach her anything, it was that writing was not worth such grand expectations. It was a capricious, ruthless, unpredictable occupation, not at all the sort of thing on which to pin one’s hopes or one’s self-worth. And it angered him beyond belief to hear her talk about herself as if she had nothing of value outside of being a writer. As if there was nothing worthwhile about her honesty and her optimism and her blithe disregard for obstacles. What would happen to her if writing was allowed to kill all of that? What would happen to her if she became like him? It hurt, somehow, to look down the road and imagine Daisy as the world-weary, cynical has-been he’d become. It would happen, if she didn’t take care, if she didn’t have some guidance.
He stopped walking and pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead with a sound of frustration. The whole mentoring thing had been a ploy. It wasn’t supposed to become real.
The sound of crunching gravel caused Sebastian to lower his hands and glance over his shoulder, and as he watched her come around the bend in the path, with the sun shining on her bright hair, hair she didn’t even think was pretty, he couldn’t stand it.
“I was like you once,” he said, turning toward her. “I thought writing was all there was to life. I thought it would prove to my father and to me that I was important in my own right, not because I was born into a certain class, not because I was destined to be the next Earl of Avermore, but because I could be great at something. Like you, I wanted something I could call my own. There was a sort of hole inside of me, and I thought writing would fill it.” He took a deep breath. “But it didn’t. It never will. It can’t.”
She started to speak, but he forestalled her. “If you want to be a writer, fair enough, but don’t think it’s more than it is. Do it to tell the story, and for no other reason. As for being great, that’s an illusion. The moment you start thinking you’re great, you begin sliding into mediocrity. Believe me, I know. Where do you think all that trivial pabulum you mentioned in your review came from? Because I thought I was great, when all I really was was cocky. Don’t let writing do to you what it did to me. Don’t let it become everything to you, because the moment it does, it slips away entirely and leaves you with nothing. Writing isn’t enough to fill your life and make you whole. You need other things, too.”
“What things?”
He smiled a little. “I don’t know, petal. I’m still looking.”
They ate their picnic beneath the shade of an immense oak tree, the largest and oldest tree at Avermore, Sebastian told her, planted by the first earl back in 1692, or something like that.
As they ate, they didn’t talk much, for both of them seemed preoccupied with their own thoughts. She didn’t know what was on Sebastian’s mind, but for her part, she was thinking of her unaccountable admissions to him earlier. She’d never confessed such intimate feelings to anyone before, not even to Lucy. Especially not to Lucy, for her envy of her sister’s beauty and accomplishments was a black and bitter feeling she’d always tried to suppress and deny.
But Sebastian had listened to her terrible admission without blinking an eye. In fact, he’d taken her feelings of envy as something perfectly understandable and natural.
Daisy couldn’t help smiling at that. When she’d first met Sebastian Grant, she’d never have dreamed in a thousand years he could be easy to talk to. Why, there she’d stood, babbling on like an idiot, enumerating her most glaring flaws to the most attractive man she’d ever met, never dreaming he’d be angered by her opinion of herself.
If I hear you disparage yourself for those luscious freckles of yours or that gorgeous hair one more time, I’ll go off and pound my head into a wall.
Daisy’s smile widened into a grin, and her happiness bloomed again, staying with her all afternoon as Sebastian took her on a tour of the estate.
After leaving their picnic basket at the farm, they visited some of Sebastian’s favorite boyhood haunts—the dilapidated treehouse he and his cousins had built when they were boys, the tors where they had played out their favorite sieges and battles, and the enormous boxwood maze. Though he hadn’t been through it for years, he managed to guide her successfully amid the tall green hedges to the open space in the center, where, in the midst of a round pool, stood a fountain sculpture of nine women.
“The Muses,” he explained with a grin. “My grandfather put this here. He wrote poetry, and this was one of his favorite places to work in summer. Probably because it was quiet.” He gestured to a spo
t near where Daisy was standing. “He used to stretch himself out right there on the grass. He’d lie on his stomach, with his composition book in front of him, scribbling verses all afternoon. Sometimes, I’d come here, too, and we’d both write.”
“Both of you hiding from your father?” she guessed.
“Rather,” he agreed. “And from all the guests.”
“Guests?”
“My father was very much the country gentleman. There were always house parties at Avermore in the summer, but here in the maze, no one could find us, and we could write in peace.”
Something in the way he spoke made her curious. “You don’t like parties?”
“Not particularly.” Her confusion must have been evident, for he went on, “I’m well aware that I acquired quite a wild reputation in Italy, but that wasn’t because I enjoyed that sort of thing. I mean…” He paused and looked away, staring into a tall green hedge. “Italy was a period of my life I’d prefer to forget. I became a different man there, and I spent three years in Switzerland trying to go back to being the man I’d been before. But one can’t go back.” He looked at her, and something in his eyes hurt her heart. “One can’t ever go back.”
He stirred, shifting his weight restlessly. “Let’s go on, shall we?”
They left the maze, and Sebastian led her through thick groves of beech and oak trees to a wishing well, where he gave her a ha’penny to toss in. He didn’t ask her what she wished for, but she told him anyway, and when she did, he sighed and shook his head, looking at her as if she were a hopeless pudding head. “Never wish for publication,” he told her.
She made a face. “What should I have wished for?”
“Royalties, petal.” He turned and started out of the woods. “Lots and lots of royalties. And serial rights.”
She laughed, following him along a worn dirt path amid the trees and shrubbery. “Because if one is receiving those things, publication is already a given?”
“Just so.” He stopped so abruptly, she almost cannoned into him from behind. “Hell’s bells, I almost forgot to show you Osbourne’s Bend. Of all the things to forget.”
“What is Osbourne’s Bend?”
“One of the finest spots at Avermore. Come on.”
He changed direction, leading her through the woods until the beeches gave way to willows. They stopped by a sleepy, meandering stream. “This,” he breathed with strange reverence in his voice she didn’t understand, “is Osbourne’s Bend.”
Daisy stared doubtfully at the U-shaped bend in the stream before her. Sunlight dappled the water through the overhang of immense weeping willows, and on the other side, a battered old dock jutted out over the water from a thick growth of shrubbery. A punt was anchored at the end of the dock, its steering pole jutting upward off the stern.
“A very pretty spot,” she commented, “but I don’t see what’s so special about it. It’s just a bend in a stream.”
“A bend in a stream? Woman, it’s Osbourne’s Bend, the best trout fishing hole in Dartmoor.”
“Oh.”
Her lack of enthusiasm for his favorite place made him sigh. “You obviously do not appreciate the importance of a good fishing hole.”
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I might, if I knew how to fish.” She looked past the water and the dock. To the right, sitting atop a slight knoll and backing up against another grove of beech trees, was a small round structure built of stone and capped by a dome. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to it.
“That’s the folly. It wasn’t called a folly when it was built, of course. It had a much grander name: the Temple of Apollo. My great-grandfather, William Grant, fourth Earl of Avermore, had it built when the grounds and gardens were redone in 1770. He wasn’t a very original man, for he copied it from the one at Stourhead. It’s identical in every detail, even down to the name. Rumor had it that Sir Henry Hoare, the owner of Stourhead, was livid about having his temple copied, but what could he do? Temples were quite the fashion then, you see. Every peer had one.”
“I know, but why? Seems an awful lot of expense and trouble for something that serves no purpose.”
“I’m only guessing, petal,” he said with a grin, “but I think that’s why nowadays we call that sort of thing a folly.”
She laughed, and he laughed with her. “Of course,” she agreed, touching her fingers to her forehead in acknowledgement of her own obtuseness. “Quite so.”
“It was supposed to be a place for quiet contemplation,” he explained and leaned closer to murmur in her ear. “Though, if you want the truth, it’s always been a favorite spot for conducting romantic rendezvous. I thought you ought to know,” he added, donning an air of mock apology as she blushed. “For purposes of research.”
“Thank you.” She rallied, meeting the humor in his eyes with a dry look. “You’re too kind.”
She returned her attention to the view across the stream. Only a few hundred yards from the folly was another structure, one so different in style, form, and function that Daisy knew at once it was from a different, more recent generation. It was a house—a prim, doll-like house nestled amid the trees, painted white, with a shingled roof and a sloping veranda that overlooked the stream. Climbing roses along the front were in full bloom, a riot of apricot blossoms that twisted upward around the pillars and along the roof lines of the veranda.
“What a lovely cottage,” she said, pointing to it.
“It is rather,” he agreed. “That’s the summerhouse.”
“A summerhouse?” she echoed in surprise. “But it looks like a place one could actually live in.”
He seemed surprised. “Well, yes, of course. My aunt usually does live there. The main house is leased most of the time, and when tenants are living there, Mathilda makes her home in the summerhouse. An American family had contracted to stay at Avermore through the autumn, but they decided to go to Torquay instead.”
“Many peers lease their houses nowadays, don’t they?” Daisy asked.
“It’s rather a necessity. Estates are expensive to keep up. We have several properties that I don’t believe I’ve ever lived in because they’ve always been leased, including a big sprawling mansion in London. Anyway, every time Avermore is vacant, Auntie moves back in until new tenants are found, because the summerhouse is a bit spartan.”
“We had a summerhouse, too,” she said, then amended at once, “Well, we called it a summerhouse, but it was really just a sort of open gazebo, made of wood. I was told that my great-grandmother served tea there on summer afternoons. We never did that, of course. It was practically falling down by the time Lucy and I were old enough to have anyone to tea. Not that we ever—”
She broke off, deciding that it was probably best not to mention that they’d never dared have guests to tea when she was a girl, since she and Lucy had never known if Papa would be sober. “Anyway, our summerhouse wasn’t anything like that.” She glanced around and spied a bridge a short distance away. “Might I have a look at it?”
“Of course, although we can’t go inside the place. Since it’s so far from the main house, my land agent keeps it locked when my aunt isn’t in residence, and I haven’t a key with me.”
Sebastian led her over the bridge and up the short knoll. As they approached the house, he said, “I was under the impression that you come from Holborn, but I can’t think where, amid the brick rowhouses of Holborn, there would be a summerhouse.”
“I live in Holborn now,” she clarified as they mounted the steps of the cottage. “My sister and I share a flat there. But we come from Northumberland, a village called Riverton.” She paused in front of a window and leaned forward, cupping her hands against the glass so that she could see the cottage’s interior. She was looking into a parlor, she realized, and though the furnishings were covered in white sheeting, the room was obviously of the same lavish comfort as the main house. The walls were papered with a pretty chenoiserie pattern, one corner of a thick Aubusson carpet peeked out from beneath
the sheeting on the floor, and there was a stunning chimneypiece of green marble with a tall, gilt-framed mirror above it.
Daisy’s mouth curved in a rueful smile. There’d been a mirror over the mantel of their drawing room in Northumberland, she remembered, although the gilt paint on theirs had long since begun to rub off.
She thought of her childhood home, with its shabby chintz chairs, threadbare carpets and peeling gilt paint, and she couldn’t help a laugh. Sebastian’s idea of spartan and hers were very different.
Straightening away from the window, she caught the puzzled expression of the man behind her in the reflection of the glass, and she felt impelled to explain what she found amusing. “You describe this cottage as spartan,” she said, turning around. “From what I can see, it’s hardly that.”
“I only meant that it has no bathrooms and no gas lighting. It’s all candles, copper baths, and chamber pots down here. In terms of modern conveniences, the main house is much more up to snuff.”
“I should hate to think what your opinion would be of the house I lived in when I was a girl,” she told him, still smiling. “It was a big, tumbledown, ramshackle old place, practically falling to pieces. Most of the furniture was gone before I was ten.”
“Your father was a man of property?”
She nodded. “He was a squire. But he had no money. He did, however, have a deep affection for cards.”
“Ah.”
“He gambled everything away by the time I was twelve. The house had to be sold to pay his debts. He died when I was thirteen.” She paused, took a deep breath, and added, “He drank. Brandy. Quite a lot of brandy, actually.”
“That must have been difficult for you and your sister. What about your mother?”
“I don’t remember her. She died when I was barely five. Cholera.” Hands behind her, Daisy leaned back against the window. “If she’d lived, things might have been different. My father might have been a different man.”
With Seduction in Mind Page 18