by Liz Carlyle
Rothewell set his brandy down. “No, my dear fellow, you must rise at cockcrow for that.”
Nash felt suddenly at a loss for words. Never had anything so seemingly small mattered so much—and he was loath to ask anything at all of Lord Rothewell. And yet, he must. “I am having a house party at the end of the week.” His voice was surprisingly calm, faintly bored. “The party is at my estate in south Hampshire. I know it is a tad late, but I wondered if…well, if you and your sister mightn’t care to join us?”
Rothewell’s expression was unreadable. “We barely know one another, Lord Nash.”
“Let me be frank, Rothewell,” he said. “I wish your sister to come—I do know her well enough, I think, to ask such a thing. But I think she ought not come alone. It would be unseemly, particularly given my…my reputation, if you will.”
Rothewell had begun to toy with various objects on his desk. “I thank you, Nash, for making my sister’s good name your foremost concern,” he said quietly. “Let me remind you that sometime past, you asked permission to court her. I discouraged it. She concurred. Have you some reason to hope that her opinion of you might have changed?”
“No, but on those brief occasions when we’ve met, I have enjoyed her company,” said Nash. “And I think it would do her good to get out of London for a day or two. We are having party for my stepmother to celebrate her birthday. And I have two young sisters whom I should like Miss Neville to meet.”
“This sounds a serious business,” murmured the baron.
“No, pure pleasure, I do assure you,” said Nash, feigning obtusity. “There is to be a dinner party, some dancing, and…and a picnic, I believe. Most of the guests shan’t arrive until Saturday. But I should account it a personal favor if you and your sister might come down a day or two earlier—Thursday, perhaps?”
Rothewell laid aside the pen he had been toying with and lifted a pair of piercing eyes to Nash’s. “Thank you, Lord Nash,” he said softly. “I shall endeavor to ascertain my sister’s wishes in this regard. But in fairness to you, perhaps I should make my position clear?”
“By all means.
“Xanthia is the most precious thing on earth to me,” said Rothewell quietly. “I cannot know your true purpose in issuing this invitation, Nash. But if you toy with my sister’s affections—if you cause her heart to be broken, or even the little nail on her pinkie finger to be broken—I will gut you like a hog at harvest.”
Nash did not frighten easily, but he felt a slight chill settle over him.
Rothewell smiled. “So, with that in mind, Nash, do you wish to rescind your invitation?”
“Not in the least.”
“Indeed,” murmured Lord Rothewell. He took another drink of his brandy. “Then we have only to determine Lord Sharpe’s plans. As you know, Xanthia is chaperoning Lady Louisa.”
Nash kept his gaze firm and steady. “I think your sister deserves a social life of her own, Rothewell,” he said. “Perhaps you ought to see to that?”
Some dark emotion sketched over Rothewell’s face, then relented. “Yes, perhaps I should,” he said quietly. “In any case, my sister will return home sometime after five, I daresay. I shall send round our answer at once.”
Nash rose. He thanked Rothewell with perhaps somewhat less enthusiasm than he had greeted the man and took his leave.
Following his guest’s departure, Lord Rothewell and his boon companion, the brandy glass, paced the floor of the study for a time. After some thirty minutes had passed, he went to his desk and, with broad, decisive strokes, penned a few sentences on a sheet of his best letter paper. Then he went to the bellpull and summoned Trammel.
“I wish my coach made ready for a journey to Suffolk,” he said.
“Yes, my lord,” said the servant. “Will you take the coupé or the traveling coach?”
“The coupé but I do not go with it,” he answered. “I shall have need of the big coach myself on Thursday.”
“Very well, my lord,” said the servant. “But where is the coupé to go?”
“To my aunt’s house,” he answered. “I have written Lady Bledsoe’s address on this letter. I wish the coachman to deliver it to her in person. He is to await my aunt whilst she packs, then deliver her ladyship to her daughter’s house in Grosvenor Street.”
“To—to Lady Sharpe’s, my lord?”
“Yes,” said Rothewell in some satisfaction. “To Lady Sharpe’s.”
“But…but what if she won’t cooperate, my lord?” asked Trammel.
“Oh, I think she will,” he murmured, taking up his brandy again. “Yes, I think that this time, for once, Aunt Olivia will do the right thing—instead of the selfish thing.”
Chapter Twelve
A Rendezvous in Hampshire
X anthia leaned her head against the glass of her brother’s finely appointed traveling coach and watched the neatly whitewashed houses of Old Basing go flying past. Unfortunately, the jostling motion of the carriage proved too much. Xanthia sat up again and tried to focus on the world beyond. It was difficult, for she was burning with impatience—and with curiosity, too.
Three days had passed between the morning she had left Nash’s bed, and the afternoon he had arrived unexpectedly in Berkeley Square. Three days of utter agony. Three days of being unable to focus on her work, or anything else which mattered. Oh, she had gone through the motions, accompanying Louisa to a ball, a tea, and two musicales. Nonetheless, she could not have said with whom she had conversed, or what she had worn. Even her days in Wapping had been a blur. Everything, including her next breath, seemed to hang by a silken thread, awaiting Nash’s next move—if there was to be one.
Well, move he had. And now she was en route to his home—and not in the dead of night, whilst hidden behind a veil, but as an invited guest. To his stepmother’s birthday party. It seemed the sort of affair to which one would invite only one’s closest and most significant friends. Did Nash hold her in such regard? Certainly he barely knew her brother. Kieran had insisted, however, that they go—which, the more she thought on it, seemed very odd indeed. He had made all the arrangements. He had written something to Aunt Olivia, though he wouldn’t say what, precisely. And today they would arrive at Brierwood.
Already they had been five hours on the road, but it felt as if they were no closer to Nash. Xanthia was on tenterhooks—and yet filled with a sort of dread, too. Would Nash seem the same person when they were in the company of other people? What would his stepmother be like? Or his sisters? Would they like her? Did it matter? Good heavens, would people say they were courting?
It was all too much. Xanthia leaned against the window again, looking for something which might distract her. In the distance, she could see an ancient church, its squat gray tower stark against a near cloudless sky. Well-dressed men were streaming from the wide-arched doorway, and beyond them, by the churchyard, two gentlemen held open the lych-gate. They looked mournfully down the green slope at the pallbearers who were carrying the bier high on their shoulders. A funeral, then. Kieran’s coachman had already slowed in deference to the dead.
“You look sad, Zee.” Her brother was paging absently through one of the magazines he had brought along. “I hope I have not made a mistake in insisting on this trip?”
She smiled faintly. “No, there was a funeral,” she said, gesturing at the window. “That’s why we slowed.”
“Ah.” Kieran lowered his head to better see, but the churchyard was vanishing in the distance. “Nevertheless, you have been squirming like an impatient child this last hour or better,” he remarked. “It makes me think of the old days, when Luke would dress us up and drag us into Bridgetown for Sunday services—trying, I suppose, to be a parent.”
Xanthia sighed. “It really does feel as if we have been traveling for weeks,” she complained. “Why must England be such a vast place? And why must it always be so cold when one travels?”
Kieran turned his gaze from the window and laughed. “Zee, England is a very sma
ll country,” he answered. “You are used to the distances and temperatures of Barbados. And perhaps you are just a little anxious, too?”
Xanthia drew her cashmere shawl a little tighter and turned again to the scenery, this time the fertile, rolling fields of Hampshire. “What did you say, Kieran, to Aunt Olivia in that letter?” she asked. “Why won’t you tell me?”
This time, he answered. “I simply told her it was high time she came down to London and did her duty by Louisa,” his eyes suddenly dark and hard. “And by Pamela, too. She is carrying the woman’s grandchild, for God’s sake. A week in town shan’t kill her.”
“And she really is coming?” said Xanthia quietly. “We have not abandoned poor Louisa, have we?”
“She really is coming,” Kieran reassured her, tugging out his watch and glancing at it. “Actually, she is probably there by now. It is not so terribly far to Aunt Olivia’s.”
In the confines of the carriage, Xanthia tried to stretch. “I still think,” she said on a yawn, “that you blackmailed her.”
Kieran hesitated oddly. “Blackmailed her?” he echoed. “With what, pray?”
Xanthia collapsed against the banquette and regarded him across the carriage. “I’ve no notion,” she finally said. “But I know Aunt Olivia cares for none but herself. To bring her to London in the midst of the season…oh, yes, I think you had some sort of trick up your sleeve, brother dear.”
Kieran’s mouth merely quirked with humor. He returned his gaze to his magazine. Xanthia wadded up the carriage blanket she’d been wearing over her knees, stuffed it against the window, and rested her cheek on it. She drifted off to the rocking of the carriage and slipped into a hazy dream about Nash, who was wearing the black cloak and horns he’d worn at Lady Cartselle’s masque and leading her through some sort of dark, twisting passageway.
When she stirred to awareness sometime later, the carriage was lurching left to make a turn between a pair of imposing stone gateposts. The massive monoliths were crowned with glittering falcons which were clutching golden orbs in their claws.
Kieran stared up through the carriage window as their huge coach swung through the gate. “I wonder,” he said dryly, “if Nash has to climb up there and polish those silly fandangles himself?”
She looked up at her brother, and blinked. “We…we are there?”
Kieran nodded. “We are there,” he said. “And soon you may see Lord Nash in the flesh, my dear, and fly at him with all your burning curiosity.”
Alas, it was not to be.
“I am frightfully sorry to say that Nash has been delayed,” said Lady Nash in a cheerful, chirpy voice. She was escorting Xanthia and Kieran up the sweeping stone staircase, and into a massive entrance hall laid with marble and dripping with gilt. “Tony did not know until the very last moment, you see, that Jeffers had even died.”
Kieran’s brow furrowed. “And Mr. Jeffers was who, again, ma’am?”
Lady Nash smiled and clasped her hands in an almost saintly gesture. “Their childhood tutor,” she chirped again. “A lovely and most learned man. But he retired to Basingstoke, then he died. I have noticed that happens quite a lot.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Kieran. “What happens?”
“Retainers retire—then they die.” Lady Nash seemed to take it as a personal affront. “I think the physicians should look into it. It is such a frightfully odd coincidence—and then one must deal with the funeral, mustn’t one? It is such a dreadful inconvenience, but Tony and Stefan—Nash, I mean—well, they could hardly pass right by the service, could they, when it was to be on their way here? Of course they could not.”
“Indeed not, ma’am,” said Kieran, though it hardly seemed necessary. Thus far, Lady Nash had answered all her own questions—and quite thoroughly, too.
Xanthia could already see their hostess might not wear well with Kieran. She was the sort of overly cheerful, pleasantly dull woman who twittered, and emphasized every other word as if it might be her last—and her most important. But it would be neither. Five minutes into their visit, Xanthia was confident Lady Nash would go on yammering from beyond the grave. The woman had not flagged since the moment she’d greeted them in the carriage drive.
“Now!” said her ladyship brightly. “You really must be worn to a thread. Why do I not show you to your rooms? And then the girls would so much like to have tea with you, Miss Neville—and with you, too, Lord Rothewell.”
Footmen were moving efficiently about the hall now, and sweeping up the double staircase with various bits of baggage, despite the fact that they had been given no instruction at all. Xanthia watched her dressing case vanish into the nether regions of Brierwood, and wondered if she would ever see it again. But one pile of luggage, a trunk and two portmanteaus in perfectly matched brown leather, remained untouched.
“I see that someone has arrived before us,” Kieran remarked. “Do please ask the servants to see to their things first. We are in no hurry.”
A frown sketched across Lady Nash’s face. “Oh, those are Jenny’s,” she said lightly. “They came down hours ago. I mean, she is such a dear—but so dreadfully impatient and full of energy. I daresay she went down to the stables to see to her carriage. She does like things arranged just so, and the servants never do things quite perfectly, do they?”
Since Lady Nash had paused for breath, Xanthia turned around. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. Who is Jenny?”
Again, the angelic handclasp. “My dear daughter-in-law,” she piped. “She is the most beautiful thing imaginable! Have you not met her? Oh, no, of course you have not. She has been either here or in France for much of the season. Jenny finds Tony’s politics dreadfully dull, and she so adores Paris. She is such a fashion plate, and cuts such a dash when she goes to Town! Are you a lover of fine fashion, Miss Neville? Indeed, I can see you are. You really must ask Jenny all the best places to shop.”
Even as Lady Nash escorted Kieran into his room, which shared a finely appointed sitting room with Xanthia’s bedchamber, the prattle continued. Waistlines, it seemed, were going up—according to the knowledgeable Jenny. Sleeves, however, were getting fuller by the minute, and hats, Lady Nash warned, were shrinking to no more than befeathered teacups. Did Miss Neville like very small hats? No, of course she did not. Her hair was too long, was it not?
Nodding and smiling when necessary, Xanthia moved about the elegant suite of rooms, peeping out the windows and admiring the fine furnishings as Lady Nash kept asking and answering her own questions until at last, all the luggage was tucked away, and the servants were beginning, again unbidden, to carry hot water into their rooms. Suddenly, Lady Nash stopped dead in the middle of a recitation about how many new reticules Jenny had bought on her last Continental excursion.
“Oh, oh!” she chirped, looking about as if she’d lost one of her shoes. “What have they done with your maid?”
Xanthia felt her face grow warm. “I do not have a maid,” she confessed. “I usually just snatch one of our housemaids. Should I have brought one?”
Lady Nash’s eyes widened incredulously. “Oh, heavens no! We must have ten or twenty of them!”
“Ten or twenty?” But as Xanthia considered the house’s size, and spotlessly clean interior, she did not doubt it.
Lady Nash smiled. “I shall ask Mrs. Garth to send up a few, and you may choose one you like,” she said. “They are all named Polly—and they all have frightfully rough hands, so pray do not let them touch your stockings.”
“Oh, please just send anyone,” Xanthia protested. “Or no one at all. Truly, it does not matter.”
“Very well then,” she said. “We shall take tea in the Chinese salon, to the left of the hall. Will you join us there at your convenience?”
“Thank you, yes,” said Xanthia.
She wondered if Lady Nash’s smile was going to crack, but at last, the lady showed herself out and bid Xanthia to bathe and dress at her leisure. Her brother’s door sprang open the moment Lady Nash shut hers.<
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“Lord, but I need a drink,” he said, coming to stand in the middle of the opulent sitting room. “Is there any brandy in that sideboard?”
Xanthia waved him toward it. “You must find it for yourself, Kieran,” she said, collapsing into the nearest chair. “Lady Nash has quite worn me out.”
“My God, what a rattle!” he remarked, picking over the sideboard. “But harmless, I should imagine—and on the verge of perishing from curiosity. I suppose one must admire her for not simply demanding the scandalous details outright.”
Xanthia looked at him oddly. “What scandalous details?”
Kieran glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “She is speculating about your relationship with her stepson,” he answered. “I’d wager a pony you’re the first female he’s ever invited here. Perhaps she finds another Lady Nash a daunting prospect.”
Xanthia felt her pulse leap. “Kieran, do be serious.”
But her brother was warming to the topic. “No, think of it, Zee,” he teased. “Why, I daresay the woman is quiet as a mouse under ordinary circumstances. You have likely terrified her.”
“She has no cause for terror, or anything remotely like it,” said Xanthia irritably. She toed off her shoes, and sank deeper into the armchair. She wondered if her brother had at last gone mad. Or could he be right? Dear heaven. “Will everyone be speculating about my relationship with Nash?” she muttered.
“Is there one?” her brother shot back.
Xanthia looked away. “I do not think I have to answer that,” she said quietly.
Kieran looked at her a little grimly. “No, I daresay you don’t—at least, not yet.” He had apparently forgotten his wish for brandy and was looking out one of the vast windows. “My God, I’ve never seen such a house as this,” he said, his gaze drifting over the view. “I count six fountains in the front gardens alone! What is that place, Zee, in India? The fancy white mausoleum?”
“The Taj Mahal?”
“Aye, that one.” Kieran turned and let his eyes drift over the frescoed ceiling. “It must look a bit like this, don’t you imagine?”