“Ha! Preach to me is more like it. I suppose you told the servants to bag it and volunteered yourself to come find me so as to escape their eagle eyes?”
“Well, yes.” Tysen paused when Douglas groaned, then went on in an apologetic voice, “Yes, you’re right about their visit. I heard them speaking about the Marquess of Dacre’s eldest daughter, Juliette, a diamond of the first order, Aunt Mildred was saying, and just perfect for you.”
Douglas looked sardonic and remained silent as a stone.
“God grant you long life, Douglas,” Ryder said with fervor. “I respect you and am grateful to my toes that you are the eldest son and thus the Fourth Earl of Northcliffe, the Sixth Viscount Hammersmith, the Ninth Baron Sanderleigh, and therefore the target of all their cannon.”
“I respect you too, Douglas,” Tysen said. “You make a fine earl, viscount, and baron, and I’m certain Uncle Albert and Aunt Mildred think so too. All the family agree if only you’d marry and—”
“Oh God, not you too, Tysen! Well, there’s no hope for it,” Douglas added as he rose from his chair. “Ah, Tysen, your gratitude will make me endure, no doubt. Pray for me, little brother. Our meeting for this quarter is adjourned, Ryder. I believe I’ll speak to your valet, Tinker, and see if he can’t sew your randy sex into your breeches.”
“Poor Tinker would be appalled to be assigned such a service.”
“Well, I can’t ask one of the maids. That surely would defeat the purpose. I vow you would break our pact if one of the younger ones did the task.”
“Poor Douglas,” Ryder said as his brother left the room.
“What did Douglas mean about your pact?” Ryder asked.
“Oh, we have both vowed that any female in our employ is not to be touched. When you are safely out of love, and thus your wits are yours again, we will gain your assurances as well.”
Tysen decided not to argue with his brother. He was above that. He would be a vicar; his thoughts and deeds would be spiritual. Also, to the best of his memory, he’d never won an argument with either brother, and thus said, “This girl they’re going to batter at him about is supposedly quite wonderful.”
“They’re all wonderful with pillow sheets over their heads,” Ryder said and walked out of the estate room.
Leaning against a dark mahogany Spanish table was Sinjun, her arms crossed, looking as negligent and indifferent as a potato, and whistling. She stopped when she saw that Ryder saw her, and said with a wonderfully bland voice, “So, how went the meeting?”
“Keep your tongue behind your teeth, brat.”
“Now, Ryder, I’m young, true, but I’m not stupid.”
“Forget it, Sinjun.”
“How are all your Beloved Ones?”
“They all do very well, thank you.”
“I’m silent as a soap dish,” she said, grinned at him, blew him a kiss, and walked toward the kitchen, whistling again, like a boy.
CHAPTER
2
THE EARL WASN’T frowning. He was anxious and he felt in his innards that something was going to happen, something he wasn’t going to like. He hated such feelings because they made him feel helpless and vulnerable; on the other hand he knew it would be stupid to ignore them. Because the government was in disarray, and that damned fool Addington was dithering about like a headless cock, he thought that this anxiety in his innards must spring from his fear of Napoleon.
Like all Englishmen who lived on the southern coast of England, he worried about an invasion. It didn’t seem likely, since the English ruled the Channel, but then again, only a fool would disregard a man of Napoleon’s military genius and his commitment to the destruction of the English.
Douglas dismounted from his stallion, Garth, and strode to the cliff edge. Surf pounded at the rocks at the base of the cliff, spewing plumes of white-foamed water thirty feet into the air. He sucked the salt air into his lungs, felt it gritty and wet against his face. The wind was strong and sharp, blowing his hair about his head, making his eyes water. The day was cloudy and gray. He couldn’t see France today, but when the sky was clear, he could see Boulogne from this vantage and the bleak coastline to the northeast toward Calais. He shaded his eyes and stared into the grayness. The clouds roiled and overlapped, but didn’t part, rather they thickened and seemed to press fatly together. He didn’t turn when he heard the horse approach and halt near him.
“I thought you would be here, Douglas. This is your favorite place to think.”
He smiled even as he was turning to greet his young sister seated astride her mare, Fanny. “I see I shouldn’t be so predictable. I didn’t see you at breakfast, Sinjun, or at lunch. Was Mother punishing you for some infraction?”
“Oh no, I forgot the time. I was studying my—” She broke off, lightly slipped out of the saddle and strode toward him, a tall, thin girl, with long legs and wild pale hair that swirled thick and curly around her face, hair once held at the nape of her neck with a ribbon, no doubt, a ribbon now long lost. Her eyes were a vivid sky blue, clear as the day was gray and filled with humor and intelligence. All of his siblings had the Sherbrooke blue eyes and the thick light hair, though Sinjun’s was lighter and filled with sunlight. All except him.
Douglas was the changeling, his eyes as dark as sin, his old nanny had happily told him many years before, aye, and he looked like a heathen Celt, all dark and swarthy, his black hair making him look like the master of the cloven hoof himself.
When he was very young, he’d overheard his father accusing his mother of cuckolding him, for his son looked like no Sherbrooke in either their painted or recorded history. His mother, Douglas recalled, had apologized profusely for what she accepted as her error in the production of this, the implausible Sherbrooke heir. Ryder was fond of telling Douglas that it was this un-Sherbrooke appearance that made everyone obey him instantly, for it made him appear so austere and forbidding.
But as Douglas looked at his sister, his expression wasn’t at all severe. She was wearing buckskins, as was he, a loose white shirt, and a light brown leather vest. Their mother, he knew, would shriek like a banshee when and if she saw her young daughter thusly attired. Of course, their mother was always shrieking about something.
“What were you studying?”
“It isn’t important. You’re worrying again, aren’t you?”
“Someone must since our government doesn’t seem to want to concern itself with our protection. Napoleon has the best trained and the most seasoned soldiers in all of Europe, and they want to defeat us badly.”
“Is it true that Fox will return and rout Addington?”
“He is ill, I hear, and the time isn’t yet ripe enough for him to oust Addington. He is as misguided and as liberal as Addington, but at least he is a leader and not indecisive. I fancy you know as much as I do about the situation.” He was well used to his sister’s precociousness—not that precisely, but her erudition, the interest in issues and subjects that should have been years beyond her, things that would leave most gentlemen and ladies blank-faced with disinterest. And she seemed to understand him better than either of his brothers or his mother or the myriad of Sherbrooke relatives. He loved her very much.
“No, you’re wrong,” she said now. “You must have seen a lot when you went to London last week and spoke to all those men. You haven’t yet told me the latest mood in the war ministry. Another thing, Douglas, you’ve armed all the men on our farms and some in the villages as well. You’ve drilled them over and over again.” On the heels of her very adult appraisal, she giggled like the young girl she was, saying, “It was so funny watching Mr. Dalton pretending to beat away the Frogs with that gnarly stick!”
“He was best at retreating and hiding. I’d rather have trained his wife. Now she would be the kind of mean-boned soldier the French would fear.”
Sinjun said abruptly, her light blue eyes taking on a gray hue, “I saw the Virgin Bride last night.”
“I overheard you telling your friends. Your
audience was most appreciative, albeit so gullible it was embarrassing. But, my dear girl, it is all nonsense, and you know it. You must have eaten turnips for dinner and it turned your dreams to phantoms.”
“Actually I was reading in the library.”
“Oh? I pray you won’t tell your mother if you chance to peruse my Greek plays. Her reaction staggers the brain.”
She smiled, distracted. “I read them all two years ago, Douglas.”
He smacked his palm to his forehead. “I should have known.”
“I think the most interesting one was called Lysistrata, but I didn’t understand how the ladies could expect their husbands to just stop fighting just because they threatened to—”
“Yes, I know what the ladies did,” he said quickly, both appalled and amused. He eyed her, wondering if he should attempt some sort of brotherly sermon, or at least a caveat on her reading habits. Before he could think of anything relevant to say, Sinjun continued thoughtfully, “When I went upstairs around midnight, I saw this light beneath the door to the countess’s chamber, next to yours. I opened the door as quietly as I could and there she was, standing by the bed, all dressed in white, and she was crying very softly. She looked just like all the stories have described. She was very beautiful, her hair long and straight to her waist and so blond it was almost white. She turned and looked at me, and then she simply vanished. Before she vanished, I swear that she wanted to say something.”
“It was turnips,” Douglas said. “You forgot you ate them. I cannot credit the ghost. No intelligent person would credit a spiritual phenomenon.”
“That is because you haven’t seen her and you don’t trust a female to report the unvarnished truth. You prefer vegetables for an explanation.”
“Turnips, Sinjun, turnips.”
“Very well, but I did see her, Douglas.”
“Why is it that only women see her?”
Sinjun shrugged. “I don’t know if it is only women she’s appeared to. All past earls who have written about her have claimed it to be only women, but who really knows? In my experience, gentlemen aren’t inclined to admit to anything out of the ordinary. They won’t take the risk of looking foolish, I suppose.”
Douglas continued, as sardonic as could be. “Your experience, hm? So you think our Virgin Bride was standing over the bed, bemoaning the intactness of her maidenhead, knowing that her bridegroom would never come? Thus she was doomed never to become a wife and a mother?”
“Perhaps.”
“More likely the chit remarried within a year, bore sixteen children like every good sixteenth-century woman did, and died of old age, hair straggly and gray, and no teeth in her mouth.”
“You’re not at all romantic, Douglas.” Sinjun turned to watch a hawk fly close overhead, its wings wide and smooth, a beautiful sight. She then gave Douglas a smile that was dazzling in its pleasure. It shocked him. She was a little girl, only fifteen, and this wondrous natural smile gave promise of the woman she would become. Actually, he realized, it scared the hell out of him.
“But I did see her, Douglas, and others have as well. You know there was a young lady whose husband of three hours was murdered and she killed herself when she heard the news. She was only eighteen. She loved him so very much she couldn’t bear to live without him. It was tragic. It was written down in full detail by Audley Sherbrooke, the First Earl of Northcliffe. Even Father wrote of her once.”
“I know, but you can be certain I shan’t write a word about that nonexistent phantom. It is drivel and all reported by hysterical females. You can be certain that your Virgin Bride will end her ceaseless meanderings with me. Doubtless all our ancestors did their recounting during long winters, when they were bored and sought to amuse themselves and their families.”
Sinjun merely shook her head at him, touching her fingers to his coat sleeve. “There is no reasoning with you. Did I tell you? My friends—Eleanor and Lucy Wiggins—they’re both in love with you. They whisper and giggle and say in the most nauseating way imaginable that they would swoon if only you would smile at them.” Then, after that girlish confidence, she added, “You are a natural leader, Douglas, and you made a difference in the army just as you’re making a difference here. And I did see the Virgin Bride.”
“I hope that may be true. As for you, too many turnips and lewd Greek plays. Oh, and give Eleanor and Lucy another couple of years and it will be Ryder who will draw their female swoons and sighs.”
“Oh dear,” Sinjun said, her brow furrowing. “You must make Ryder promise not to seduce them for he’ll find it an easy task because they’re so silly.” Sinjun fell silent for Douglas was obviously distracted again.
He was thinking that he would protect what was his just as had his long-ago ancestor, Baron Sanderleigh, who had saved Northcliffe from the Roundhead armies and managed through his superior guile to convince Cromwell of his family’s support, and after him, Charles II. Throughout the succeeding generations, the Sherbrookes had continued to refine the fine art of guile to keep themselves and their lands intact. They had provided mistresses of great mental aptitude and physical endowment to kings and ministers, they had excelled in diplomacy, and they had served in the army. It was rumored that Queen Anne had been in love with a Sherbrooke general, a younger son. All in all, they had enriched themselves and kept Northcliffe safe.
He shook his head, backing farther away from the cliff edge. There’d been a recent storm and the ground wasn’t all that solid beneath his feet. He warned Sinjun, then fell into abstraction again as he sat on an outcropping of rocks.
“They won’t leave you alone, Douglas.”
“I know,” he said, not bothering to pretend ignorance. “Damn, but they’re right and I’ve been a stubborn bas—fool. I have to marry and I have to impregnate my wife. One thing I learned in the army is that life is more fragile than the wings of a butterfly.”
“Yes, and it is your child who must be the future Earl of Northcliffe. I love Ryder dearly, as do you but he doesn’t want the title. He wants to laugh and love his way through life, not spend it with a bailiff poring over account books or hearing the farmers complain about the leaks in their roofs. He doesn’t care about all the pomp and dignities and the knee-bending. His is not a serious nature.” She grinned and shook her head, scuffing the toe of her riding boot against a rock. “That is, his is not a serious nature about earl sorts of things. Other things are different, of course.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
Sinjun just smiled and shrugged.
Douglas realized in that instant that he’d made his mind up; more than that, he also knew whom he would marry. Ryder had himself brought her up during their meeting. The girl he’d fancied three years before, the beautiful and glorious Lady Melissande, daughter of the Duke of Beresford, who had wanted him and had cried when he’d left and hurled names at his head for what she’d seen as his betrayal. But three years before, he’d been committed to the army, committed to destroying Napoleon, committed to saving England.
Now, he was only committed to saving Northcliffe and the Sherbrooke line.
Aloud, he said, “Her name is Melissande and she is twenty-one, the daughter of Edouard Chambers, the Duke of Beresford. I met her when she was eighteen, but I left her because I had no wish to wed then. The devil, I was only home because of that bullet wound in my shoulder. It is likely she is long wed now and a mother. Ah, Sinjun, she was so beautiful, so dashing and carefree and spirited, and behind her was the Chambers name, old and honored, become dissolute only in her grandfather’s day. There was little money for her dowry three years ago, but I didn’t care if she came with naught but her shift on her back. Aye, her brother is another rotter, and even now he brings new odor to London with his profligacy. He is dissolute and a wastrel, gaming away any guinea he can get his hands on. It is likely that he will finish off the Chambers line.”
“I think it noble of you not to be concerned with a dowry, Douglas. Mother says again and agai
n that it is the only basis for marriage. Perhaps your Melissande has waited for you. I would. Perhaps no one wed her because there was no money, despite the fact she’s a duke’s daughter and beautiful. Or, what if she did wed another but is now a widow? It’s possible her husband would have been obliging and died, and it would solve all your problems.”
Douglas smiled at that, but nodded, again, comfortable with speaking aloud his thoughts and his plans to Sinjun. Yes, he had liked Melissande, found her careless ways fascinating, her clever manipulations intriguing. He’d also wanted to bed her very badly, had wanted to see her tousled and whispering endearments to him, adoration in her eyes for him.
Sinjun said quietly, “If Melissande is still available then you won’t have to worry about spending time in London to find another appropriate girl.”
“You’re right,” he said, rising and dusting off his breeches. “I will write immediately to the Duke of Beresford. If Melissande is still available—Lord, it makes her sound like a prize mare!—why then, I could leave immediately for Harrogate and marry her on the spot. I think you would like her, Sinjun.”
“I’ll like her if you do, Douglas. Mother won’t, but that doesn’t matter.”
Douglas could only shake his head at her. “You’re right. Do you know she’s the only one who’s never carped at me about marrying and providing the Sherbrooke heir?”
“That’s because she doesn’t want to give up her power as chatelaine of Northcliffe. The Sherbrooke dower house is charming but she disdains it.”
“You sometimes terrify me, my girl, you truly do.” He touched his fingers to her wind-tangled hair, then cupped her chin in his large hand. “You’re a good sort.”
She accepted this token of affection calmly, then said, “You know, Douglas, I wondered why the Virgin Bride would come at this particular time, but now it makes sense. I think she appeared because she knew you were planning to marry. Perhaps her coming is a portent; perhaps she is trying to warn you or your Melissande about something that will befall you if you aren’t careful.”
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