by Robyn Carr
“The Waverly women have long been a strain on me, and I should expect nothing less from you,” he stated dryly, speaking of his wife and Adrienne’s mother.
“I hasten to remind you, Uncle, that the lands on which you place such great value and on which you claim your privy title would not be any closer than the moon without Waverly women. You’ve profited mightily … and quite dishonorably—”
“Enough of you,” he shouted. “My privy title is worth a damn sight more than your rosy breasts, and I’ll not be slandered for all the good you’ve gained at my expense. Trust that had I done less in my work, there would be perhaps a plot of overgrown swamp fallen to you in a country too far to reach … if a petition on behalf of Sir Adrian could even reach His Majesty. Ungrateful whelp. I may yet see you a scouring maid for some old innkeeper.”
He clamped his mouth shut with a grunt and looked back to his breakfast, though nothing on his plate interested him. His niece and her words were still a heavy weight upon his mind. She angered him beyond definition with her petty aristocracy and flamboyant displays. And much of what she said was entirely true; Julian had, as a young man, bought his knighthood when he married Evelyn, the elder of two daughters of a baron. His link to fortune came when the younger daughter went abroad with her husband, Sir Adrian, and his own Evelyn died a few years later. It left him an entire estate, perhaps legally belonging to Adrienne’s mother, but immediately within his entire control. And with the wars, alliances shifted between monarchy and Parliamentarians, and with Adrienne’s mother’s timely death … The young woman would have to argue very convincingly to unseat him from his title and land. Women, after all, were not landholders when men could be.
Again he silently chastised himself for initially taking her in. He could have claimed her an impostor. He could have sent her to a convent and had her reared there. There were many ways he could have avoided all of this. And were it not for the fact that her only asset lay in her beauty and natural ability to seduce people when she chose to, he might beat her soundly. But Julian was not a complete fool; he wouldn’t cut his own purse strings.
“Well,” she said, “I see you’re most disagreeable. And you have been since Sir Trent returned to Braeswood. If you’ve taken such a liking to that old piece of rotting junk, why don’t you simply arrange my marriage to him?”
Julian’s fist came down with a thump on the table. The dishes rattled and his thin, gray hair seemed to stand up. “I’ll unseat the devil, but I’ll not join my family to his in any fashion, by marriage or by war! Do you hear me? Never!”
“I’ve seen him, Uncle. I doubt you could possibly unseat him. He seems mighty powerful.”
“I’ll petition the king to have him removed, and I’ll find some evidence that he’s unworthy.” He stabbed at a piece of bread on his plate. “God, to live in a time when criminals are given titles. And to the bargain, I hear there is talk of granting him yet more. Well, not to my liking, I promise you, and I’ll see someone hears about it.” He chewed thoughtfully. “Someone … Now who do I know?”
Adrienne was fairly amused by his angry display. “I doubt you know anyone at all willing to go up against Wescott for you. His noble family has—”
“Bah! The lot of them aimed themselves to a high and mighty position—all lost, mind you, lost. And the only Wescott left did not spend his years abroad in honest service to the king, but as a thief and murderer. ’Tis well known. He ran with rogues for a brace of years, was nearly hung for his misdeeds at least once, but the crafty fellow took enough time from his frolics to play soldier to His Majesty, and all his lesser pursuits were overlooked. He’s lucky, that’s all. But noble? I highly doubt his nobility. Humph,” he snorted. “Titles for criminals and I can’t even get a reasonable commission for my own son, rightfully parented.”
Adrienne’s eyes were large and very attentive. She’d heard Wescott called many names, but thought it all angry slander from the lips of her jealous uncle and cousin. She assumed they exaggerated his reputation as they had his looks. “You mean to say, truly, that he was a common criminal?”
“Aye, but you’d think all propriety lost, for no one gives a holy damn, not even the king, whose morals should be exemplary.”
“But surely his lineage from the Wescott family ensures his inheritance of the demesne of Braes—”
“The fact is, he is the last of the family, wears his meager title by the good graces of our king, and claims his fancy title by reciting long and tirelessly his battle stories and whining about his losses during the wars.”
Adrienne watched her uncle take two impatient bites from his plate and then push it away from him in absolute misery. He rubbed at his swollen belly as if it were most discontent with the fare, belched loudly, and finally looked at her again.
Her eyes glittered mischievously and she rocked on her small feet slightly. “And how do you claim your noble heritage, Uncle Julian?” she asked impishly. “Nearly as one can calculate, your father was a hand on a war vessel and your mother a tirewoman. Do you claim your nobility from my departed Aunt Evelyn?”
“There was nobility in my grandmother’s family, quite sadly lost in poor marriage, which may be in the offing for you, wench, should you fail to curb your tongue.”
“Can it be proved?” she asked saucily.
“It is of no significance,” he fairly shouted. “It can be proved that I have been baron of Dearborn and defended it successfully for over twenty years.”
“And,” she said with superiority, “a claim to title much weaker than Sir Trent’s.”
“Get out of my dining room,” he blustered.
“But uncle,” she wheedled, moving in on him. He nearly flinched as she came closer, for she was as sultry and conniving as any cat, creeping about with claws tucked in only in wait to slash an innocent face to ribbons. “You must hearken to what you see. Sir Trent is in the king’s good favor; hasn’t the king himself ordered that you find a way to maintain peace on your boundary? And if you attempt to discredit him, you will be the one flogged, for I don’t think the king likes those people who did not suffer during the wars.”
He peered at her cautiously from under lowered brows. She stood preening, twisting her curls around one finger. “I know you think I am just a foolish child, but I know the reasons Sir Trent hates you so. ’Twas you who gave over his family to Roundheads and lay claim to his property.”
“That’s a bald-faced lie,” he stormed, rising instantly to his feet. His anger only brought a river of giggles from Adrienne.
“You were more fond of the story when the king was still abroad,” she teased.
“It was not treason, but a misunderstanding I took advantage of only to save my own neck. A man can’t be called a criminal for doing the best he can by his family.”
“Oh,” she groaned, stamping her foot. “Don’t you see? You can’t uproot him now, he’s too close to the king and much too strong. And you can’t regain Braeswood through any argument. But aren’t you even a little afraid that Sir Trent will find a way to wheedle Dearborn out of His Majesty?”
“No,” Julian said quietly, not even slightly comfortable with his own lie. It was not as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
“On the grounds that you committed treason by—”
“Not treason,” he barked. “I made no move against the Royalists. They were snatched from their hiding place by Roundheads and there was no way to save them. No way, I tell you. And it’s buried now, and by order of the king we make no reference to it.”
“But someone had to betray their hiding, and that leaves you accused. It would still be better to find a set of terms that would compromise Sir Trent and put the land back together. And I saw him, Uncle Julian, when he visited Dearborn.” Her eyes glittered with excitement. “I think he was fairly taken with me.”
Julian sat down slowly, looking closely at his niece. “I think once inside that stout manor, his weaknesses might become clearer and a method of having
him out of the country again might be closer at hand,” she added.
He barely hid his shock with a burst of laughter. “You foolish hussy. Do you think he’d have you? Aren’t you even afraid for your own safety?”
“He could prove a loving spouse, if carefully handled.”
“You’re mad. Get yourself out of here and trouble me no more.”
Adrienne knew when to let an argument drop heavily on the man’s head, giving him time to consider it more closely. “But my dresses,” she pouted.
“Get out or you’ll go to court naked with a scrub pail in your hand. Get out!”
Adrienne turned with a huff that swung her skirts wide, and her heels clicked angrily as she left the room. Julian simmered into a slow burn. “Damn wench,” he muttered. “Damned plotting, ungrateful slut. I’ll get her out of my hair before she sells me.”
He burned with the desire to uproot Wescott and be rid of him, and still more burning was the desire to see something relatively profitable come of his years of bartering. That Stephen was overseeing Dearborn while he was in London was little comfort, for he thought the lad highly unsuitable for lordship there. Although he was the only heir, he was mean-minded and a poor manager and lacked a healthy respect for Julian. He hoped to get one decent grandson out of him before he died, lest he leave this life without seeing where it all might go.
“I ought to marry them to each other,” he thought vindictively. “Neither deserves any better, and they’d either proliferate or kill each other.”
But it was not the death of either one of them that Julian feared, but his own. However strong he cited his own defense, he had been the pawn in the war. And he was the only one who knew it. It pained him a great deal that there was no one to trust, and at the moment he thought perhaps Adrienne was his only option.
Since Wescott had returned to the country, the crime on the land was a heavy burden. And although he sought to protect what was his, it had been difficult. The dark hand that threatened his possessions came precariously close, and only a fortnight before, his stables had been fired. He had neither the evidence nor influence to accuse Wescott openly and began to fret over his own safety. He had even conceived of a plan to set things aright between the two of them, and developed a document hidden away that, once discovered, would lay bare the events of the battle that had cost Sir Trent so much. For all his protests, Julian was not entirely proud of the picture that had been painted of him. But at this time, he was the only one to know of the existence of the paper.
He blandly considered Adrienne’s proposal, but dismissed it as quickly. Stephen would argue such an arrangement vehemently, and Wescott would not likely consider such a marriage alliance. “But that one I sired,” he thought with distraction, “has caused endless complications and worries, leaving me trusting him no more than I do Wescott—and it is for him that I shame myself with the reputation I have gained. ’Twould set him down to see his inheritance slighted.
“But she could not wheedle that knight, for he’s not a smitten boy to be wrapped around her wily finger.” He considered her behavior—her ruthless plotting and scheming—as he moved the food around his plate. It was no secret to him that she would see him beggared to meet her own ends; loyalty was not Adrienne’s strong point. But he could not deny her talents, however much he disapproved.
He decided, before finally laying down his knife and giving up on his meal, that he would send for the clothier and watch Adrienne as she played on the hearts at court. Then he would give her suggestion a second consideration.
Chapter Seven
Jocelyn was something between a prisoner and a guest. She had no say over the servants; indeed, she feared most of them and would shun any authority offered, yet she occupied the lady’s chamber. Most of the staff had begun to call it that, with a heavy and sarcastic emphasis on lady. And while she wasn’t locked in or restrained in any manner, neither was she left alone for even a moment. Even Sir Trent eyed her carefully, if he looked at her at all.
Trent’s brooding lasted only a short time, and he was quick to explain his ragged temper when he first visited her in her new abode. “It grates on my generous nature that when I instructed a servant of mine to establish you in a comfortable chamber, she chose this one. This chamber was in fact my mother’s, and the woman to occupy it should therefore be my wife.” She studied his face as he spoke and made no attempt at reply. “This need not be a burden of yours, madam, since you are fair enough to do it justice, and you may as well be comfortable for the time you’re here.”
He seemed to need space and time to adjust himself to her occupancy, for he did not press her in any intimate ways, but dined with her twice, both occasions being more than a little tense for Jocelyn’s frayed nerves. His questions were direct, brusque, and personal. And she failed to see the reason.
“This man, your betrothed: would he marry you now, if I requested it of him and you were willing?”
“I am certain he would not. He is a very religious man,” she answered, failing to add that she did not desire marriage with him.
“And his name is Cross?”
“Not his given name, but one that he was labeled with and found much to his liking.”
“Have you ever loved a boy from your town? I know you were a virgin, but surely you played lovers’ games and rolled once or twice in the heather.”
She assured him she had not, and when further pressed, confided her father’s intentness upon virtue. To that he laughed heartily, offending her slightly with his offhanded appraisal of her morals.
“But ’tis most fitting, ma chère. It was the same with me; my father was a noble stallion and I was nearly hanged for a thief.” He looked at her coldly, his eyes glittering. “Don’t you want to know if I was guilty?”
She gulped hard and shook her head. “I think I am safer with my own judgments,” she told him. Inwardly, she wondered.
He pressed her for the details of her family life, her brothers and sister, the cause of her mother’s death, and finally, he asked many questions about the lay of the land in recent months and the troubles the villagers struggled with.
Both times, to her dismay, he left her to seek out his solitary bed. Confused and still frightened, she assumed that she held no pleasure for him and he was simply being kind, letting her reside in comfort awhile. She fully expected to be sent upon the road on short notice. Fretting this, she stayed alone in her rich chamber, venturing out of that room only with Glynnis and only to parts mostly unpopulated by manor servants.
Soon she learned that his plan was not to have her sent away immediately, but he did not betray his reasons. For whatever cause she was left alone except for the brief dinners they shared, it was not because he had finished with her. She had been in his house only a few days when he knocked on her door, opened it without her answer, and stated simply and without much tenderness, “Come to my chamber. I have a true aversion to seducing you in my mother’s bedroom.”
As on the first night, she hesitated slightly and then followed his instruction, her heart racing with fear and her legs wobbling with anxiety. She steeled herself to the occasion but found, oddly, that there was no pain.
Trent was experienced in these things, she learned, for he did not ravage her hungrily as on the first night, and when it was over, he smiled down at her with a superior look on his face. “I know that I did not hurt you,” he informed her.
She shook her head to affirm this, but lay passive and obedient to his will. He frowned as if in displeasure, kissed her brow, and slept.
It was late in the month of August, when the night air was cooling and there was an abundance of rain, that Jocelyn lay awake more often in his chamber than alone in her own bed. She would ofttimes listen to his breathing, with an occasional grunt or snort, as he slept. Her earlier fears were dispelled and replaced by new ones. She no longer feared pain associated with his lovemaking; in fact, she had found it strangely pleasant. She did not fear severe chastisement for
her fallen morals, for the servants left her alone and Glynnis acted mostly like a friend. Trent’s moods were unpredictable, but even he proved a beast with a gentle, softer side. But for all her avowed courage when she threw away her old life and her father’s values, she feared the day he would ask her to leave. And she felt certain that whatever her quality that had prompted him to give her a place in his house, he would either grow tired of it or find another with more appeal.
The days were so heavy with ennui, especially for one such as Jocelyn who had worked very hard since early in her youth, that she came in a very short time almost to look forward to his advances. He was gentlemanly enough, at least holding conversation with her and seeming to take some care with his caresses. Aside from Glynnis, there were no friends here and no one to talk to. There were many shivering moments, in the cold light of morning, when Jocelyn felt her cheeks flame with embarrassment at the merest thought of their coupling. She would meet his wandering hands with stoic acquiescence, but before long he would casually tease her into a discomfort that caused her frenzy. And this reaction amused him greatly, for she heard his soft chuckles. Once he murmured to her, “If there is such joy in your body when you are covered with this mien of a vanquished slave, I wonder what madness I will feel when you come to me in passion.”
The prospect awed her, and nothing less. That she would crave this routine seemed outrageous, more so than the fact that she willingly withstood it. She strongly hoped she would never find herself thusly cursed, for he was a man of brisk wants and shrewd design. He was about business when the sun rose, often on the road with no word of his plans or estimations of his return. He ate when he was hungry, worked when the sun shone, and called to his mistress when he was in need of relief. His life, it seemed, was well ordered and there was no excess. And no one questioned him.