Unsuitable Bride for a Viscount

by Elizabeth Beacon

She had wanted him to show some sign of emotion and now he had she was not quite sure she knew what to do with it all. ‘Stop imagining the worst,’ she told him briskly. ‘For either of us to be of any use in this search we must believe your niece had the good sense to find shelter last night. After having her pocket picked she is sure to be wary of being seen walking alone, so even not finding sight or sound of her is a good thing when you think about it rationally.’

  ‘Where is she, then?’ he asked starkly.

  All she could do was shake her head in reply because she was tired as well and the girl had seemed to vanish from the face of the earth from the moment she walked across the New Bridge at Worcester and out into the countryside. It was probably as well brisk footsteps on the stone-flagged floor announced Miss Donne’s arrival and stopped them both imagining Juno in all sorts of terrible situations now he had put them back into her head.

  ‘Have you brought us good news of Miss Defford, my lord?’ Miss Donne asked rather breathlessly.

  Marianne marvelled hope could blind such a shrewd lady to Lord Stratford’s grim expression and weary eyes.

  ‘Only that she is still lost, ma’am. I hoped to find my niece when I got here and I was bitterly disappointed,’ he said wearily.

  ‘Indeed?’ Miss Donne said with a sigh as if a heavy weight was back on her shoulders. ‘Then we must begin searching once again,’ she said resolutely and looked at Marianne as if she would know where to start.

  ‘Miss Defford may be walking into town after sheltering from the storm as we speak,’ she made herself say bracingly.

  Chapter Three

  Alaric stared down at the fire and tried to do as Marianne said and put the worst of his terrors out of his head. He could not call her anything else because he had no idea who she was and where she fitted into brisk little Miss Donne’s household and perhaps Miss Grantham’s life as well. Speaking of whom, where the devil was the woman? He glared at the door between this cosy room and the rest of the oddly silent and empty-feeling house and sensed yet another mystery on the other side of it. A pity his brain seemed so slow and dazed with lack of sleep since he really needed it smartly aware and on parade with its buttons polished and boots blacked.

  It was lack of sleep that made him puzzled and foggy about the unfamiliar new world he seemed to have been wandering in ever since he had reached Stratford House—however long ago that now was—and found out Juno was missing. He would probably find a genuine housemaid, dazzling and quick-witted and even a little bit compassionate towards such a bumbling idiot right now. And wholly delicious and so very unconscious of her own attractions. Tall and slender and just the right height for a lofty lord like him as well, his inner idiot pointed out as he tried to pretend he was as unaware of her as a woman as she seemed of him as a man.

  Marianne seemed to be doing her best to pretend he was not even here as she bent cautiously to push the already-filled kettle hanging on its iron arm over the fire without coming anywhere near him. She swiftly stepped back and away as if he might be contagious and he knew he was filthy and smelt of horse and mud and whatever had been in the barn before he took shelter in it last night. He was lucky both ladies had much better manners or a lot more compassion than his mother.

  He only had to imagine the Dowager Lady Stratford’s hard grey eyes icing over with contempt at even a glimpse, or a whiff, of him right now and he felt all the coldness of his childhood at his back like a January wind from the Arctic ice caps. Shivering in his boots despite the fire and the calendar telling them it was high summer, he tried to gauge whatever it was they were being so careful not to tell him about Miss Grantham’s prolonged absence.

  He had told himself all the way to Paris and back it was sensible for him to marry kind, well-bred and beautiful Miss Grantham so he could provide a much better home for Juno and a loving mother to his children when they came along. At least he knew enough about bleak and unloving childhoods to want better for his sons and daughters than the one he endured. Yet now he was here and Miss Grantham might have decided to accept his sensible offer of marriage, he felt as if he had left something crucial out of his calculations. Surely he could not have felt as if Marianne was all the warmth and impulsiveness and loyalty he had ever wanted at first glance if there was any more than polite friendship between him and Juno’s former governess? How could he have thought common interests and civility were enough, that instant of surprised and horrified recognition had whispered, as he had stared at a very different female when she had opened the door? He wanted her until his bones ached and a lot more besides he had best not even think about now.

  ‘Tea, my lord?’ Miss Donne asked and it felt as if he had to come a long way back to the now sunny-again kitchen to look at her as if he had never even heard of the stuff.

  ‘Hmm?’ he heard himself say like a looby.

  ‘A beverage made with leaves from the tea plant and imported from China at great expense,’ Marianne pointed out impatiently and with a wave at the fat brown kitchen teapot on the scrubbed table as if he might not have seen one before.

  ‘I do vaguely recall the idea,’ he said with a smile of apology for Miss Donne and a wary glance at Marianne in case she had any idea why he had been lost in his thoughts. From the frown of impatience knitting her slender honey-and-brown brows almost together, he imagined to her he was just being an annoying sort of lord again instead of a lustful and predatory one. So at least he had been excused the shame and indignity of being rejected by Marianne Whoever-She-Was before he could do more than stare at her like a mooncalf. That was one horror to cross off his list, then. He did not know if he could face another furious lady telling him how hateful he was and how bitterly she wished he had never been born after his mother did just that when he found out what she had done to Juno and challenged her selfishness and lack of feeling. ‘The French seem to prefer coffee,’ he added, ‘or drink chocolate at breakfast time.’

  ‘You can hardly expect us to roast and grind coffee beans or ask our closest wealthy neighbour to lend us cocoa beans and her chocolate pot when you have turned up on the doorstep with the dawn uninvited, Lord Stratford.’

  ‘Now then, Marianne, that is hardly polite and invitations are unimportant at a time of crisis,’ Miss Donne said and Alaric could have hugged her, except he liked her too much already to engulf her in the reek of sweaty man and the less savoury smells of the road.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Donne. Miss...’ he let his voice tail off because he could hardly call her Marianne.

  ‘Mrs,’ she snapped crossly, and he suspected her tiredness was almost as huge as his when she seemed to repent her brusque impatience with a sigh. ‘My name is Mrs Turner,’ she admitted as she avoided both their gazes and poured tea into all three breakfast teacups without waiting for any more foolish arguments from him.

  Just as well since jealousy and acute hatred of the lucky Mr Turner shot through him in a hot arrow of frustration. He was too late, he let himself mourn silently as the absurdity of being too late for a woman he had not even met an hour ago tried to snap him back to sanity. She obviously did not like him, so that made his feral longing for another man’s wife feel even worse.

  ‘I am a widow,’ she told him almost defiantly and with no idea she had just freed him from a fire he had never wanted to burn on. He did not have to want another man’s wife so unmercifully he was having trouble keeping hold of the elusive thread of this not quite a conversation as well as his dignity.

  ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he lied.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said as if that was the last she wanted to hear on the subject. ‘Do not let your tea get cold,’ she advised him. ‘It might not be coffee or chocolate, but it is hot and you look as if you need reviving, my lord.’

  ‘Well, really, my dear,’ Miss Donne chided, as if personal comments mattered at a time like this, ‘this is not the time for picking at one another with Miss Defford stil
l to find and time a-wasting.’

  ‘No, you are right,’ Mrs Turner admitted. ‘We need to eat and be out and ready for the search as soon as the others are awake,’ she added.

  Alaric could only nod his agreement and drink his tea. Both ladies were right, they did need to eat and drink so they would have strength for the resumed search for Juno. His niece was all that mattered and never mind his foolish obsession with a honey-haired widow with dreamy blue eyes and a mouth a man would ride a hundred miles to kiss, if only those eyes were dreamy for him and her mouth half-asleep still after a night of hot and heady loving in his bed.

  * * *

  When Miss Donne’s Bet came downstairs, tying her apron and struggling with her cap, she blurted out the story of Fliss walking off into the hills in the pouring rain last night to look for Miss Defford before she even noticed the travel-worn lord lurking in front of the kitchen fire. So then Miss Donne had to tell His Lordship Marianne’s brother, Darius, had gone after Fliss and neither of them had returned yet. Lord Stratford had tersely demanded directions and marched out of the back door as soon as Bet could gasp them out. By the time Marianne put her damp shoes on and stumbled after him, the viscount was almost out of sight and obviously in a fine temper. She had been forced to pant after him up the winding lane out of town and even then she only just managed to keep him in sight.

  She scurried into earshot just in time to hear why he was in such a hurry. Apparently Darius had compromised Fliss before Lord Stratford could marry her himself. From the dreamy way Fliss was looking at Darius, Lord Stratford would not have got his way even if he had got here in time to keep them apart last night. Then the viscount said Fliss had recently inherited a fortune and accused Darius of being a fortune hunter. How ironic when Darius had tried so hard to resist his attraction to Fliss because she was a poor governess and he thought he should marry money. If Juno’s disappearance was not so sharp in all their minds, Marianne might have been amused by the sight of Lord Stratford frustrated of a rich and suitable viscountess.

  She did smile now as she recalled the look on Fliss and Darius’s faces while they faced His Lordship on a sodden hillside track. Every look and gesture screamed they were lovers and Fliss did not look in the least bit sorry to turn her back on His Lordship’s flattering offer. Then they all remembered Juno was still missing and never mind who would marry whom.

  Lord Stratford was the girl’s guardian and he had said they should all forget worrying about gossip. If the whole world knew she had gone missing, they just needed to find her—so now half the neighbourhood were out looking for the missing girl. Finding waiting for news at Miss Donne’s more wearing than actively looking for Juno, Marianne was glad when Darius asked her to come back to Owlet Manor with his orders for the men today so he could stay in Broadley.

  All these hours on, Marianne shook her head at her vivid mental image of Lord Stratford when she should be worrying about the still-missing Juno. In her shoes Marianne knew she would have bolted as well, however worrying it was not to have found the girl so many hours after she set out to walk the last stage of her long journey. Indeed, she had run away to marry Daniel, but that was a glorious adventure with him at the end of it. Marianne felt the bleakness of Daniel’s death at the bloody siege of Badajoz more than two years ago threaten and there was always this hollow in her heart now. No Daniel to tease and quarrel and laugh with or to love with every breath in her body. How fiercely he would argue with her about that empty heart if he could hear her! He would insist she must live life to the full and love again, even if the best part of her was cut away the night he died.

  Marianne shook her head at the bereft and gloomy place her tired mind had taken her when she was not paying attention. Things were better now. She was free of the suffocating respectability of genteel Bath society and her parents’ compact new home. Darius inheriting Owlet Manor had rescued her from her mother and the condemnation of the Bath tabbies. She would rather scrub floors than go back there, so it was best to live in the moment and worry about the future when it got here.

  And now the tall and fancifully twisted brick chimneys of Owlet Manor were visible above the sheltering trees at last and she was nearly home. A slender, dark-haired girl stepped out from behind the largest tree of all next to the grand gates of Owlet Manor nobody had shut for at least half a century. Marianne drew rein sharply and made Robin snort and shake his head in protest as she stared down at the girl and paid no attention to her horse this once. If she had not seen Lord Stratford first she might wonder if there was more than one girl wandering the countryside today, since this one was in quite the wrong place, but if there was a Defford stamp this girl had it. She was as dark haired as the viscount and her eyes the same clear bright blue.

  Juno shot Marianne a wary look, her white teeth worrying at her lower lip like a child who knew she had not learned her lesson well enough. Marianne recalled Fliss worrying about the girl’s painful shyness with strangers and bit back the rebuke for all the trouble she had caused that was trembling on her lips. The girl would bolt into the woods if Marianne was not careful and she had proved very good at being invisible when she chose, so goodness knew when they would manage to find her again.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Defford,’ she managed to say calmly. ‘Would you like a seat in the gig for the last bit of the way to my brother’s house?’

  Juno shook her head, shot a frightened look towards the bustle and noise of the farmyards where the men must be thatching ricks and seemed to be on the edge of doing that bolt Marianne was so worried about. The men were doing whatever it was with so much shouting and laughter Marianne guessed they had taken advantage of Darius’s absence to drink a lot more cider than they should have this morning. She hoped the hay was dry under the tarpaulins before they began again or the wet grass could overheat and catch fire and that was the last thing Darius needed.

  ‘Will you promise me not to run away again while I have Robin stabled and rubbed down? Miss Grantham has chewed her nails to the quick worrying about you and you must love her if you have come all this way to see her. I hope you will not let her suffer such painful anxiety for much longer by running away yet again.’

  Juno looked shamefaced and shook her head, but that was not enough for Marianne. ‘Promise me out loud that you will not bolt as soon as my back is turned,’ she insisted with a stern look to say she would know if the girl lied.

  ‘I promise,’ she whispered and even managed to look Marianne in the eye so she supposed she would have to trust her.

  ‘Very well, then. If you do not wish to be seen, follow the path over there. It winds around the house by the side of the lake and nobody in the stable yard or on the other side of the farm will be able to see you. There is a garden door round there and a bench where you can wait while I see to Robin and get the men working as they should be. I will have to get them to see the error of their ways while I am about it, so do not be surprised if it takes longer than either of us want it to.’

  Juno surprised her with a shy smile and another shake of the head at the notion of Marianne ordering the farm workers about and them doing as she said.

  ‘Having dealt with soldiers of most ranks and temperaments when I was with the army, those rogues are child’s play,’ she told the girl with a nod towards the noisy rickyard before she smiled back with mischief in her eyes. ‘It is just a matter of learning how to handle them,’ she added.

  Juno shook her head again and looked dubious about the notion of even trying to understand what made most men tick.

  ‘I will try not to be long,’ Marianne promised with one last look at the diffident but determined girl who was already slipping into the unkempt gardens like a wraith. Marianne shook the reins to persuade patient Robin to move on and tried not to look back as she fervently hoped Juno Defford was a girl of her word.

  After handing out brusque orders to the farm servants and a crushing rebuke to
make them see the error of their ways, Marianne made sure Robin was spoiled after his gruelling day yesterday. She let herself into the manor house by the back door as if in no particular hurry lest any of the men were watching her go, but as soon as it was shut behind her she dashed across the hall to let the girl in. Juno rose from the sun-warmed bench and Marianne gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘What the deuce are you doing here, young lady?’ she asked with all the effort and worry of the last day making her sound brusque and irritated.

  ‘Miss Grantham told me about you and your brother and this poor old house in her letters,’ Juno replied with a half-defiant, half-apologetic look that said there might be more of her uncle’s fire in her than appearances suggested.

  ‘Walking on past Broadley for the sake of curiosity would be cruel, so I hope you have a better reason for doing it. Miss Grantham is beside herself with worry.’

  ‘I should never have sent that message. Nobody would have known I was here if I had not scribbled it in panic after I was robbed,’ the girl said sulkily.

  ‘And that would make everything all right, would it? You sound very young and foolish when you spout such rubbish and you put us through hours of worry today for no good reason. Can you even imagine what horrors Miss Grantham is dreading as the hours tick by with no sign of you?’

  ‘I—’ The girl broke off whatever she was going to say and Marianne saw her throat work as if she was fighting a sob. ‘I will not go back to London and I will not marry that man. I would rather die.’

  ‘Stop being such a tragedienne. Of course you must not marry a man who is so much older than you, especially if you do not even like him.’

  Juno shook her head as if she could hardly believe someone was agreeing with her. She burst into overwrought tears as the strain and hardship of the last days and weeks caught up with her and Marianne drew the sobbing girl into her arms.