She waited until she knew that Douglas had ridden out with his estate manager, a man whose name was Tuffs, then made her way confidently downstairs. She paused, hearing Tony speaking to Hollis.
“I wish Ryder hadn’t left before we discovered Douglas and Alex were missing. He was trying to help Douglas get his brains unscrambled.”
“I agree,” said the stately Hollis. “But Master Ryder is gone and there are none to assist His Lordship, save you, my lord. Has His Lordship, ah, ceased yet to demand your guts on a platter?”
“No,” Tony said. “Hell, I grow tired of remaining here trying to make Douglas see that Melissande isn’t at all the sort of wife who would suit him. Stubborn blighter! Why can’t he see beyond her beautiful face to her altogether self-indulgent nature? I think it time I took my wife away, Hollis, to Strawberry Hill.”
“I have come to understand that Lady Melissande would prefer London, my lord.”
“So she would, but she will prefer differently when she comes to understand what it is I wish her to want.”
If Alexandra thought it strange for a peer of the realm to speak with such intimacy to a butler, her brief stay at Northcliffe Hall had taught her differently.
“Perhaps it would be best for you to depart, my lord. Ah, but His Lordship’s humors are so uncertain. I am concerned about Her Ladyship.”
“I too, Hollis. But her illness at O’Malley’s cottage—I can’t help but feel it was a good thing. Douglas seemed affected, and he did care for her intimately. An excellent idea of yours that no one go back with O’Malley to the cottage.”
Alexandra backed up a step. She didn’t want to hear any more about intimacy or the machinations of Douglas’s staff. She wasn’t sure that Tony wouldn’t try to stop her from leaving. Or Hollis, for that matter. Or Mrs. Peacham. She chewed on her lower lip, trying to figure out what to do.
Then it occurred to her that none of them dared touch her. They could rant and rave, but even Tony, easygoing, and an immense rogue with unlimited loyalty to his cousin, despite his ultimate poaching in Douglas’s nuptials, wouldn’t dare to lock her in a room, and that is what it would require, for she would not remain willingly.
She was still, and at this moment, the Countess of Northcliffe. She could do whatever she pleased. Only Douglas could stop her and he wouldn’t. Still, because she wasn’t completely daft, she waited until Tony drove out with Melissande. She’d heard Melissande say to Mrs. Peacham, excitement in her lovely voice, that he was taking her to Rye, a town of wondrous historic importance. “Yes, Mellie,” Tony had said fondly, kissing her temple, “Rye was chartered in 1285. Edward the First, you know. It’s lovely and I’ll kiss you again on the cliff walk.”
At one o’clock on Friday afternoon, Lady Alexandra, soon to be the discarded Countess of Northcliffe, armed with one valise and her own thirty pounds, walked firmly out the front door of the hall.
Hollis stood slack-mouthed in the entranceway, all his most convincing arguments exhausted in the dust, and with no discernible effect on Her Ladyship.
Mrs. Peacham was twisting her black bombazine skirts.
The earl was riding at the eastern end of the Sherbrooke property, inspecting two tenants’ cottages that had suffered badly in the heavy rainstorm.
What to do?
Hollis tried again. “Please, my lady, you must wait. You aren’t well enough yet to travel. Please, wait for the earl’s return.”
“I shall walk if you don’t have a carriage fetched this instant, Hollis.”
Hollis was very tempted to let her walk. She wouldn’t get very far before the earl caught up with her. Damn the boy! Hollis couldn’t be certain that he would go after her. He had the first time, but now? Why hadn’t he come to grips with anything? He’d been foul-tempered with everyone since his return from O’Malley’s cottage. Hollis didn’t blame the countess. He put the blame squarely on the earl’s shoulders. He deserved to be whipped. “All right, my lady,” Hollis said at last, nearly choking on the bitter taste of defeat. He instructed a footman to have a carriage fetched from the stables and he also instructed the footman to have one of the stable lads search out the earl. “Have the lad find him quickly, else I’ll have his ears in my mutton stew!”
Ten minutes later Alexandra was settled in one of the earl’s carriages, John Coachman instructed to take her home. Her single valise sat on the seat opposite her. She was leaving only with what she’d brought with her.
Life wasn’t going at all well.
When John Coachman suddenly pulled up the team at a shout from another carriage, Alexandra poked her head out the window to see what was happening.
She came face to face with an older woman who had the look of the Sherbrookes, a woman who simply stared at her, as gape-mouthed as Hollis had been.
A young face appeared, a quite lovely young girl who said happily, “Why, are you Douglas’s new bride? How wonderful, of course you are! I’m Sinjun, his sister. This is marvelous! You are Melis—no, no, you are the other sister! Welcome to the Sherbrooke family.”
Alexandra looked skyward. Her luck, which she’d thought was on the rise, she now saw plummeting to earth, and soon her face would be rubbed in the dirt.
The other woman, doubtless Alexandra’s soon-to-be-annulled mother-in-law, sniffed with alarming loudness, and said, “I don’t understand why you are still here. You shouldn’t be out visiting tenants for it is not your responsibility. You are nothing compared to your sister, from all I have been told. You are nothing at all out of the ordinary. My son would never have selected you.”
Alexandra felt the clout, but she said calmly, “You are certainly right about that. Your son doesn’t want me. I am not visiting the tenants. I am leaving. No, don’t say it. I am delighted to give you the pleasure of my departure.”
She was on the point of telling John Coachman to continue, when the door to the other carriage opened and the young girl jumped to the ground. “Do let me ride with you!”
Alexandra closed his eyes, ground her teeth until her jaw hurt, and cursed, one of Douglas’s colorfully lurid expressions.
The other woman yelled, “Joan, you will come back here this instant! The chit is going away, let her go!”
The girl ignored her, flinging open the carriage door and bounding exuberantly inside. Alexandra was facing her soon-to-be non-sister-in-law.
“Where are we going?” Sinjun asked, smiling brilliantly at Alexandra.
CHAPTER
12
ALEXANDRA STARED HARD at her sister-in-law. “I want you to get out, please. You heard what I said—I am not visiting tenants or anyone else. I’m leaving Northcliffe Hall and I have no intention of returning ever again.”
Sinjun gave her the placid look of a nun. “I will go with you, of course. It’s all the same to me. Please don’t make me get out. I am your sister now by marriage and I’m not a bad person, really, and—”
“I don’t assume you’re a bad person, but I am leaving your brother, just as your mother obviously wishes, just as your brother wishes, just as, doubtless, the backstairs maids wish. I cannot be responsible for you. Goodness, I don’t even know you or you me! You must go about your business. Would you please get out of the carriage?”
Sinjun found this complication profoundly interesting. So this was marriage in the making. It was far more engrossing than any of the Greek plays she’d read by candlelight at midnight in Douglas’s library. It was closer to the Restoration plays she’d read by Dryden and Wycherley. Though she didn’t understand all the speeches of the plays, she understood enough to laugh herself silly. She also knew enough not to tell Douglas that she’d read them. She had this feeling he wouldn’t be at all amused.
“Why are you leaving Douglas?”
“Please, get out.”
Instead, Sinjun waved to the other coachman and the carriage rolled away. Alexandra’s mother-in-law was still looking out the window back at her. There was a look of confusion mixed with hopefulness on her face.
She didn’t attempt to halt the carriage.
“Now there is no choice unless you want me to walk. No, I didn’t think you would. You must talk to me.”
It was simply too much. Alexandra merely shook her head, opened the door, grabbed her valise, and stepped to the ground. She looked up at the homely appalled face of John Coachman. “Take her home, if you please.”
“I can’t,” the coachman wailed. “His Lordship would feed my innards to the pigs. I can’t! Please, my lady, don’t ask me to do that. I can’t leave you. ’Twould mean my throat being slit, my hide being whipped off my back!”
“I had not believed the earl so very vicious and unfair. It matters not. It is no longer my problem. In truth, I don’t care what you do. Remain or return to Northcliffe. I will be the one to leave.” She swung away and began walking. The valise was heavier than she’d believed. She would make do. She wouldn’t stop and she wouldn’t let her shoulders stoop.
Sinjun was soon at her side, humming under her breath as if she hadn’t a care in the world, as if they were out for an afternoon stroll with nothing more on their minds than the varieties of butterflies they would see. The carriage was soon following some paces behind them.
“This is absurd,” Alexandra said, so frustrated she was nearly shrieking. She whirled about to face Sinjun. “Why are you doing this to me? I haven’t ever done anything to you that I know of. As I said, I don’t even know you.”
Sinjun cocked her head to one side and said simply, “You’re my sister. I’ve never had a sister, only three brothers, and I can tell you it’s not at all the same thing. Douglas has obviously upset you. He is sometimes a bit autocratic, perhaps even stern and forbidding. But he means well. He wouldn’t strap John Coachman, believe me.”
“He means well toward you but I am perfectly nothing to him. Go away now.”
“Oh no, I shan’t leave you. Douglas would feed my innards to the pigs too. He has very firm ideas about protecting ladies. A bit old-fashioned, but nonetheless, he is the head of the Sherbrooke family and takes his responsibilities very seriously. There are scores of us, you know.”
“He doesn’t take his marriage seriously. Go away.”
“I did hear that he wasn’t expecting you, but I paid no attention to that. Tony would never serve him up a pig in a poke, if you know what I mean. I’ve never seen Melissande but everyone says she is the most glorious creature in southern England, perhaps even in western England as well. But I can see Douglas quickly becoming very morose had Tony married her to him rather than to himself. I don’t mean to insult your sister, but Douglas wouldn’t deal with a female who knew she was beautiful and expected everyone to recognize her beauty all the time. Tony did the right thing, though I do hope he knows what he’s doing. But what I don’t understand is why—”
Alexandra stopped her. She said clearly and quite calmly, “Listen to me now. Your brother doesn’t want me. He wants my sister. He loves her. Moroseness has nothing to do with anything. He doesn’t care that she knows she’s beautiful. He is perfectly willing to praise her eyebrows for the next fifty years. He wants to kill Tony. He is bitterly unhappy. I am leaving so that he doesn’t take me himself back to my father and drop me on the doorstep of Claybourn Hall like some unwanted package. Would you not do the same thing, Sinjun? Would you not want to escape such humiliation?”
Her sister-in-law had called her Sinjun, and without hesitation. Sinjun smiled. “I am only fifteen so I don’t perfectly understand what has happened. But I agree with you. Humiliation is not a good thing. Are you certain Douglas would humiliate you in that way? I cannot see him doing it. He isn’t a cruel man.”
“He wouldn’t be to you.”
Sinjun just shook her head. “Douglas took a birch rod to my bottom last year. He thought I deserved it but, of course, I heartily disagreed. I don’t even remember what I did. Isn’t that odd? Listen now, I cannot leave you alone. I fully intend to go with you. May I call you Alexandra? Perhaps even Alex? It is a man’s nickname, just like mine. Do you have any money? We will need money, you know.”
Alexandra stared at the young girl with frustrated awe. The Sherbrookes were a family beyond her comprehension and experience. She found herself nodding. She’d heard of tidal waves, but she’d never before imagined that she could experience the effects of one and not be close to the sea.
“Good, because Mother never gives me any money at all, except at Christmas, and even then I must account for every shilling, every penny, even to what I paid for her present. And she always criticizes my choices. Why, last Christmas, I hand-sewed a half-dozen handkerchiefs for Douglas and she said the linen had cost too dear and that my stitches were crooked and they should be tossed away. Of course Douglas didn’t throw them away. He said he liked them. He uses them. It was humiliating now that I think on it. Perhaps I can understand just a little bit. I would like to be treated like a reasonable person, not patted on the head like a silly pug.”
“Yes,” said Alexandra.
Sinjun rubbed her hands together. “I am taller than you and much larger so I doubt I can wear any of the clothes in your valise, but perhaps we can buy me something else to wear on our way to your home. How far must we go? Several days away, I hope. I long for some adventure. Yes, it will be great fun, you’ll see. Perhaps we’ll even meet some highwaymen. How vastly romantic that will be! Don’t you agree?”
It was then that Alexandra began to realize that she’d been firmly trapped and netted and by a guileless fifteen-year-old girl.
“I do so love to walk and enjoy nature,” Sinjun continued, taking a skip. “I also know a number of quite interesting stories and that will pass the time. If I bore you, why then, you must tell me and I will be quiet.”
Alexandra, overwhelmed, bewildered, and routed, could only nod.
“Douglas merely tells me to shut my trap, as does Ryder. Tysen—he plans to be a vicar—he wants to say the same things but he fears the fires of hell if he did say what he truly wanted to. His perceived path of rectitude is sometimes extremely annoying, but Douglas says we must be patient because Tysen is young and not yet thinking clearly. He says his belfry is still filled with nonsense. Tysen also fancies himself in love with a twit who makes me cringe she is so appallingly good and priggishly proper. Ryder just laughs at Tysen and says she has two names—Melinda Beatrice!—which is nauseating, and she simpers and has no bosom.”
Alexandra gave it up. She eyed the sweet-faced very enthusiastic girl beside her. She turned and waved toward John Coachman.
“What are you doing, Alexandra?”
“Going home,” she said. “We’re going home.”
“Oh dear, no adventure then. How disappointing. Perhaps someday in the future you and I can go seashell collecting. That’s good sport. Come along then, let me assist you into the carriage.”
It wasn’t until five more minutes had passed that Alexandra noticed the quite smug grin on Sinjun’s face. She stared and winced and shuddered as understanding hit her. The chit had knowingly done her in. Guileless, ha! Alexandra felt a perfect fool. Dear God, what malignant force had set her in the midst of this remarkably horrid family?
Done in by a fifteen-year-old girl who looked as innocent as a nun. It was very lowering, more lowering than falling off a horse and landing on her bottom.
Douglas stood on the bottom step of Northcliffe Hall, his hands on his hips. He watched the carriage pull into a wide arc and come to a halt not six feet from him. John Coachman looked triumphant. Relief flowed from his smile. Douglas was glad he’d sent his mother into the hall with orders that she remain there. Her initial impression of Alexandra hadn’t been promising. He sighed even as he stoked his anger. Tysen stood at his elbow, telling him what Sinjun had done, how forward she’d been and how he should discipline the chit, but Douglas had only smiled, knowing rather that he would thank her.
He knew Sinjun. And he’d been right. She’d brought his errant wife back, and with little waste of time. She should have b
een born a male; she would have made a masterful general.
When the carriage door opened and Sinjun leapt out, Douglas didn’t move. He stared beyond her. Finally, Alexandra emerged, her head down, her shoulders bowed. She looked defeated and that angered him even more.
“I see you came back,” he said, cold as a fish on ice.
“Yes,” Alexandra said, not looking at him. “I don’t want to be, but it appears that I cannot even best the youngest Sherbrooke.”
She was trying to hold her valise and that angered him even more. She was still recovering from her illness and yet she’d tried to leave him again—and carrying that damned valise herself!
“The Sherbrookes are competent, for the most part.”
“May I leave now, my lord?” As she spoke, she raised her head and looked him squarely in the face. “I want to leave. May I have Your Lordship’s august permission?”
“No.” Douglas strode to her and pulled the valise from her fingers. “Come along now.”
She didn’t move. He was aware that every Sherbrooke servant was an avid watcher to the damnable melodrama they were witnessing, and that he was serving up meaty gossip for many winter nights to come.
He moved closer to her and said very quietly, “I am tired to death of your imprudence. You act without thought, you are reckless, and I will tolerate it no more. You will come with me this instant, and for God’s sake, stop acting like I am going to beat you!”
She straightened her shoulders and walked beside him into the hall.
Her mother-in-law stood there, looking ready to breathe fire at her. Alexandra hung back. She didn’t want this. She looked at the other young man, and knew him to be Tysen, the youngest brother who was in love with the twit of two names and no bosom. Sinjun was nowhere to be seen, but Alex knew she was watching. No Sherbrooke would pass up such a promising spectacle.
Douglas turned back when she stopped. “What is it now?”
“When are you going to take me back to my father?”
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