by Nicole Locke
* * *
Fergus Selford, Earl of Barberry, rode into the stableyard of Berry Brampton House for the first time in his life and found it strangely deserted. He hadn’t expected a fanfare on the arrival of an errant earl nobody knew was coming. Or much of a welcome even if they did, but it felt a bit of come down to stable his own horse. He owned the dratted place from cellar to rafters, yet he’d settled the tired animal in a convenient stall and retrieved his unfashionable boat cloak from the tack room before he met a single soul.
‘We’re not expecting visitors, so if you’re the new land agent you couldn’t have arrived at a better time, although you’re three weeks late and we had almost given up on you,’ a rather pleasant contralto voice told him from the shadowy doorway. ‘I saw the lamp and heard someone moving about in here as if he had a right to be here. All the stable boys are supposed to be out looking for one of my charges so I came to see if one of them was shirking. Now you’re here we need all the help we can get before Lavinia hurts herself or one of us falls into the ha-ha. You can help me search, since you’ll get lost if you wander about on your own and we’ll have to find you as well.’
‘If you’ve managed to mislay one of the Selford girls that’s your problem,’ Fergus told her gruffly, blaming his shabby cloak for her mistake. He was almost inclined to tell her who he was and that he employed her to take care of his wards, so why should he bother himself with a search for one of them when he was weary and uncomfortable and didn’t want to be here in the first place?
‘It’ll be yours if the Earl finds out we couldn’t keep one of his wards safe because you refused to help.’
‘Is she mad or just simple? It has to be one or the other since you believe she’ll do herself a mischief in his lordship’s private grounds.’
‘Miss Selford is a bright and spirited young girl who has trouble keeping her temper in check. A trait I sympathise with at this very moment,’ the governess said through what sounded like clenched teeth.
Now why was arguing with her in the semi-darkness more stimulating than flirting with sophisticated beauties? He heard her take a deep breath and she seemed to call on the reserves of patience his wards hadn’t already tested to the limit. Reminding himself he was here to do his duty, not amuse himself at the governess’s expense, he ordered himself to stop provoking her and get on with it.
‘Never mind, we’ll find her without your help and I suppose you wouldn’t be much use anyway,’ she said haughtily. ‘If you can exert yourself long enough to cross the yard and find Cook, I expect she will feed you, then direct you to your quarters. I wish you joy of the land steward’s house, by the way. You should have told us you were coming—since you are so tardy we had given up on you and abandoned the attempt to make it more welcoming.’ Even in the gloom he could see the glare the Amazon shot him before she turned to march back the way she came.
‘Stop,’ he ordered and she turned as slowly as an offended queen. He wanted to kiss the temper off her lips for a shocking moment. She would slap him and quite right, too, and he hadn’t come here to prove that every hard word his late grandfather had said about him had turned out to be true.
‘No, I’m busy,’ she said and strode towards a path he could only just see in the fast fading light.
‘Two pairs of eyes and ears will be better than one in this gloom,’ he said as he caught up with her, bowed ironically and indicated she carry on leading the way. ‘You know where you’re going,’ he explained, beginning to enjoy himself now he had such a prickly lady to annoy and this new disguise to settle into.
He told himself he wouldn’t have thought of such an impersonation until she thrust it on him, but not announcing who he was to a household he never wanted to inherit in the first place was too tempting to turn his back on. As a ruse for finding out what was going on without putting the entire neighbourhood on alert that the new Earl was home at last it could hardly be bettered. Pretending to be the land steward would save him the huge effort of being the sixth Earl of Barberry and he could spy out the land, then decide if he could endure being here. Perhaps it was as well the Moss boy, who he’d lined up to act as land steward, had backed out of this post for an easier one since his lack of backbone had forced Fergus to come here, but taking up his inheritance in the teeth of the late Earl’s bitter opposition still rasped his pride somehow.
Everything the Selfords had worked so hard to keep from a whore’s son, as they so charmingly called him, was his, but it felt like a hollow victory. After living on his own terms in Canada for almost a decade the rules of a polite little English society felt petty. As a heedless and rather angry young man he had been determined to defy his grandfather and all those who made his time at Eton and Oxford a mixed blessing. There was always some aristocratic sprig ready to deride him as grandson of Lord Barberry on one side and an Irish gypsy on the other. None of them would believe he never really wanted the titles and lands hanging around his neck like a millstone, so he’d left the country when the old Earl was barely cold in his grave. There were so many things he could do elsewhere, so many adventures to have, but he’d been doing his best to ignore the voice of his conscience and his mother’s pleas to come home ever since he’d fallen in love with the vastness and promise of the so-called New World. Another thing he could blame being Earl of Barberry for, having to leave a place he could have made his home if not for all the responsibilities he’d been so intent on running away from ten years ago.
Still, as Moss he could learn what he wanted to know, then go away again if he chose to and nobody here would even know he’d been. He ought to thank the woman striding along the path ahead of him as he stumbled in her wake like a rowing boat chasing a stately galleon.
Now what was her name? He was ashamed to find he couldn’t remember it, despite the quarterly reports she insisted on sending him of the state of his cousins’ health, happiness and progress, or lack of it. Still, she was the latest in a long line of governesses who’d all insisted on writing to him about their woes with the Selford girls when they were paid handsomely to deal with them. Just as well this one had no idea who he was, because he paid little attention to her meticulous lists of how Miss Lavender or Miss Patty, or whatever they were called, were progressing when his lawyers sent them on. Thousands of miles away he’d had to trust that his senior lawyer knew what he was doing when he’d insisted that young girls needed someone youthful to care for their happiness as well as teach them to paint screens and sew samplers, or whatever young ladies did until they were old enough to marry. Considering this female had carelessly mislaid one of his wards, he was beginning to wonder about the fellow’s wisdom and sanity right now.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked as he followed Miss Whoever into a generous old orchard.
‘If I told you it would mean nothing, unless you’ve been studying estate maps before taking up your employment?’ she said with too much irony for his taste.
‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’ he said defensively.
‘And only three weeks late as well. How very diligent, Mr Moss.’
‘That discrepancy is between me and my employer.’
‘And he doesn’t sound the most patient or tolerant of them. In your shoes I’d be careful how I conducted myself, now you’re here at last.’
‘Is that a threat?’ he asked, with what his half-sisters said was his most annoying sneer. Annoying or not, it was wasted on this woman. She was peering at what looked like a tall hutch in the twilight as if he didn’t exist.
‘An observation,’ she said absently. He felt like a fly so trivial it wasn’t even worth slapping him. ‘Don’t get too close,’ she warned and he instantly wanted to.
He was beginning to sympathise with his absent ward’s need to escape her governess’s authority. Then he got too close and an angry buzz shot past his ear. He stepped back hastily as the persistent little creatures took e
xception to him but, annoyingly, left the governess alone as if she belonged here and he didn’t.
‘I did warn you,’ she said with I told you so in her voice.
‘What is this place?’ he asked gruffly.
‘A bee house, of course,’ she said and followed him away as if nothing about this place troubled her, which it didn’t, he supposed—she wasn’t the one in danger of being royally stung.
‘Oh, of course, and what an ideal place for a runaway schoolgirl to hide.’
‘Lavinia is a fanciful creature and local lore insists the bees be told whatever happens in a household if they are to be part of it.’
‘And they really want to know when a girl is out of sorts with her governess?’
‘It was a possibility. Now maybe you’ll go back to the house and ask for your dinner so I can get on,’ she said as if tired of indulging him.
‘While you wander about in the dark and risk life and limb? Even I’m not that much of a yahoo, Miss... Who are you anyway?’ he demanded irritably, glad now he hadn’t remembered her name and given himself away.
‘Miss Court and I’m not in any danger since, as you pointed out just now, we are in his lordship’s private grounds. And I’ll get on a lot faster if you leave me be.’
‘No, if the wench has done something to herself in the dark you can’t carry her, great girl of fifteen or sixteen as she must be.’
‘How do you know the age of my eldest charge?’
Curse the woman, but now she sounded suspicious. Fergus searched his memory for lies he’d already told her. Even the son of a country squire would know enough to guess how old the Earl of Barberry’s wards must be now.
‘Everyone knows Barberry was left with a stable of female cousins when he inherited,’ he said and even managed to sound plausibly impatient. ‘The old lord’s quest for another male heir is hardly a secret and if those girls were old enough to be presented they wouldn’t need a governess, so even the eldest cannot be out yet.’
‘Clever,’ she said flatly and why didn’t he think it a compliment?
Copyright © 2017 by Elizabeth Beacon
ISBN-13: 9781488021619
The Knight’s Scarred Maiden
Copyright © 2017 by Nicole Locke
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