An Untitled Lady (2 page)

“Why? His departure is the very reason we can celebrate. I was a grave disappointment to him, you know, and everyone knew not to mention Nash’s name.”

The man beside her growled.

Lord Shaftsbury shrugged his slender shoulder. “Tell me you’ve changed your mind about the old sod now he’s in the ground. Of course not. But enough about Nash; he’s forever interrupting. Tell me, my angel, how you come to join us tonight?”

A stone seemed to lodge in her throat. He couldn’t be serious. “You jest with me, my lord?”

The girl, Ellspeth, tittered, and Lord Shafsbury gave her a wink. “Just this once, no, m’dear. Clear up this mystery for us, tout de suite, if you please.”

Did they really wish to play this scene as farce? The floor seemed to slide away under her. But she bent her knees and stood her ground. “Of course. I see. I was summoned—”

“A summons from a ghost. Familiar tale, indeed.” He nodded at Ellspeth, who nodded double-time back, an eager mimic.

“Let her finish,” interrupted Mr. Quinn.

“Pax, Nash. You were summoned?”

“To fulfill the contract.”

Deacon’s agile face stilled in expectation, eyebrows up. Even Mr. Quinn looked puzzled. Ellspeth had frozen mid-smirk. Everyone seemed to be waiting for a cue.

“Contract?” Mr. Quinn was the first to recover.

“Of marriage. To you.” Finally saying the words, and hearing them aloud, Maddie felt the ground firm up beneath her.

But her announcement seemed to take all the wind from pretty Miss Ellspeth’s sails.

She fainted dead away.

{ 2 }

Deacon and Miss Wetherby prowled the old earl’s estate office like caged tigers. Nash closed the door, caging them further but at least dampening the din from the hall and the opportunity for prying ears. The click of the latch set Deacon off.

“I should have you both tossed out,” he said, sweeping his gaze wide to include both the lady by the bare bookshelves and Nash on the other side of the room. Then he clapped his hands together, face alight. “But by god, what a show! Have any more surprises planned?”

“I should hope not.” The lady’s skin shimmered, as if the muscles underneath were trying to rebel and being clamped down at the last moment. Nash moved toward her, unaccountably wanting to lay a hand on her shoulder, but held back. You didn’t treat a lady as you would a spooked mare, even if she might benefit from a gentling. Especially then.

She shot away from him anyway, stopping near the night-dark windows. The rain had started in earnest, he saw in her wavering reflection.

Deacon paced to the desk, and then turned back to Nash. “Brilliant. I would never have thought of it. Do you think Ellspeth will cede the field now? Bad form not to, really.”

The lady shuddered.

Nash fought the unexpected urge to comfort her. He was just as puzzled by her outburst as Deacon. Unlike his brother, though, he’d seen the flash of shock at Deacon’s reception of her news.

She had expected to be welcomed.

Almost without realizing it, he was closer to her, within arm’s reach. “You thought we would all know, didn’t you?”

Deacon prattled on. “Come, come now, spill. You know you can’t keep a secret, Nash.”

“Bollocks. And I’m no part of this.”

“What can you mean? Wait. Little lost Wetherby, are you in league with your uncle? This smells of his doing.” Deacon’s light tone darkened. “It’s far too jocular for something my dear brother would do.”

She snapped around to stare at him. “Absolutely not.”

Deacon at last turned to look at her. His eyes widened, finally catching on. “You were serious?” He collapsed into the chair in front of the desk

“Pray, sit,” Miss Wetherby said acidly.

Nash took his father’s chair, realizing at the last moment that it swiveled. He braced his palms on the cleared expanse of the writing surface to steady himself. He rather liked this view of his brother, bewildered and in the beggar’s seat. But Deacon was old news; the lady was the draw. With a raised eyebrow and a slight dip of his head, he directed her to the chair beside Deacon. She took the hint, stepping directly in front of it and sinking down slowly and so neatly she did not need the arms to support her. A lady, to the bone.

Deacon sat, hands twitching but mouth closed, his current of words at a brief ebb. Nash cleared his throat. They both looked up to him, Miss Wetherby in wariness, Deacon in supplication. He liked this power, too, and chose to use it on the lady first.

“Who sent you?”

“Your father.” Her words cast a chill across the room.

“Merciful heavens.” Deacon slouched in the seat, throwing an arm up, as if pleading with his god. “The man reaches out from his grave to direct our lives.”

Nash waved his hand, distracting his brother and cutting the rant short. “Explain, please, Miss Wetherby.”

She centered her round-eyed gaze on Deacon, who seemed to be staring at the ceiling. “We entered into a contract, sir, of marriage. I saw some papers, a draft. I was given to understand that you had promised, as well.”

Lord Shaftsbury launched forward and slapped his hand onto his knee with a sound crack. She flinched as if it had been a physical blow. “I did no such thing. The man who promised you was already married.”

“Not to him. He promised me to you. That is what I have been in training for all these years.”

“I can’t believe my father trained up another tyrant to replace him when he shuffled off. You, ma’am, are no lady.”

Miss Wetherby closed her eyes, drawing in a breath as if containing her temper against the ranting of a child. “Who made the agreement is not my concern. I merely seek to honor it.”

“You mean, you did not agree, either? That’s rich. Two unhappy souls bound for eternity.”

“Hold fast.” Nash tried to regain the line of his thinking. “What do you mean, in training?”

She answered, again not taking her eyes from Deacon. “I’m to be your complement. I know the crops your tenants raise, and how they remedied the blight from aught nine. I can explain why the irrigation routes on your back twenty look askew but do, in fact, work. I’ve kept the books for Miss Marsden’s Academy, including tenants, sharecroppers, and charity payments. I acted as chatelaine these past three years. And I’ve studied the history and maintenance records of Shaftsbury, as well as your places in London and the estate in Scotland.”

Deacon sighed theatrically. “I suppose you’ve got my maiden speech in Lords written up, as well.”

Though her jaw shut tight, her feline eyes started to moisten. She was as much the victim as they were. Perhaps more.

She must have believed his father, the old tyrant. Must have thought he had her interests at heart. She was wrong. They all were.

This time the breath she took in shook her shoulders, breaking training. “Do you wish to read the agreement? I have the letters in my trunk.”

“She has it in writing.” At Deacon’s mocking tone, she narrowed her eyes.

“What do you know of contracts?”

“Nothing. He’s the expert, ask him.” Deacon looked to Nash for support.

Nash leaned back, careful not to swivel, and steepled his hands. “He knows as much about business as he does estate management.” Irresponsible sot.

“That’s not fair.” Deacon’s puppy eyes had long lost their powers over Nash.

Miss Wetherby appeared equally unaffected. “I have a contract with this family, with this estate. I have honored that agreement through my actions over these past six years. I have trained, worked, and waited. I have done my part. I expect you to do yours. As a gentleman.” She shifted back, not crossing her arms but somehow giving the impression she had.

Deacon dropped the soulful look. “Don’t know many gentlemen then, do you?”

“Stow it, Deacon. Miss Wetherby, we will need to look at your correspondence, yes. I assume you have no formal, notarized, contract?”

“But he promised.” She worried at her bottom lip a moment, then a thought seemed to accost her “You believe I lie?”

“Do you blame us? You reappear, claiming to be a long-lost neighbor. The only person you claim to know is safely deceased.”

“Your butler knew to expect me. And Mr. Perkins.”

Deacon sighed, a shade less theatrically. “Perkins. Where is the man?”

“You dismissed him, remember? Said he smelled of the old earl.”

“And so he did.”

“But he apparently informed Emmett of Miss Wetherby’s arrival on his way out the door.”

She nodded. “He wrote to me for the details of my travel.”

“Funny that he never spoke of it to me.” Judging by the lady’s moue of displeasure, she did not find it so.

“Deacon, think. Where would the old codger have kept such correspondence? You wrote him, as well, I expect.”

“Dashed if I know.”

This room was floor to ceiling bookshelves, like the library, but here the shelves were mainly bare. His father preferred to work in a Spartan office. To preserve his ideas of lineage and family pride, though, he had the family ledgers made up in beautiful bindings, neatly arrayed on the first two rows of shelves. He kept the family Bible here, too, with its record of births and deaths and families of origin. If only he had arranged his correspondence as neatly.

When Shaftsbury had died of sudden apoplexy, his desk had been a solid mound of correspondence. Only he and poor Perkins knew the method of it, and Perkins had taken that knowledge with him.

Nash pulled out the top drawer at the side of the desk. The quarterly books, half-completed, in their nude state before binding. Middle drawer appeared to be for dog toys. They had not had a hound in the house for years.

Deacon rose and drifted to the bookshelves. He ran his hand across the open page of the Bible, and turned to the flyleaf. “I’m still blessedly unattached on the family tree, thank heavens. And how on earth did my pater come to choose you?”

“You chose me, he said. You told him once that you loved me.”

“When you were four.”

“I believe you were eight at the time. I was not yet four.”

Deacon tapped a finger on his cheekbone. “Eight years old. In the summer?”

In the bottom drawer, Nash found dozens of bundles of letters, each tied with string. He pulled them all out, making a paper dune on the surface of the desk.

“I remember now.” Deacon clapped his hands, as if delightfully surprised by a cake made just for him. “The little heiress, all dimples and curls. An angel. But your hair was gossamer. Now it’s mouse.”

“The winds of time change us all, my lord.”

“A fallen angel then. But you’re still an heiress?”

“Deacon.” Nash shot him a glare.

His brother raised both eyebrows. “What? Isn’t that part of the contract?”

She shook her head. “I’ve nothing but the interest on two thousand pounds. Your father said I’d no need of anything but pin money as he’d provided me a husband.” Deacon crossed his arms.

Most of the old earl’s correspondents franked their letters. Nash quickly put those aside to his left, as a girl at boarding school was unlikely to have a peer to frank her correspondence for her. But one such package caught his eye, anyway, as it was in his mother’s spidery copperplate. He set those to his right. Another set traveled under military seal.

“Who did the old man know from the Navy?”

“Just you.” Deacon drew closer to the desk. “Good lord. Did he write everyone in the kingdom?”

Miss Wetherby rose, as well. “Perhaps I might assist.”

“You would know your own hand, I trust.” Deacon flinched away as she neared. Nash pushed half the remaining stack toward her. She reached for the top set.

“It’s no good. It will never do.” Deacon shook his head. “If father orders it from beyond the grave, even if his ghost takes to haunting me in my sleep, I’ll not marry you. That is the good part of being the earl.”

“You cannot mean it.” She dropped the pages and turned to look at him.

“I damned well mean it.”

She drew her spine taut. “What will happen to me?” Deacon said nothing. “You would throw me into the streets?”

“Don’t be hysterical.”

“Why not?” Her voice cracked on the words.

“You’ll return to the bosom of your family, none the worse for wear. We’ll find you a chaperone somewhere. No one will be the wiser.”

“The bosom of my family is a crypt.” She sagged, leaning back on the table for support.

“Unfortunate. We’ll send some blankets along.”

“I wish your father were here.”

“Be glad he’s not, or we wouldn’t be having even this civil a conversation.”

“If your—if the previous earl had not passed away, would we even be having this discussion?”

He grimaced. “Likely not. But he’s not, is he? Wait, hear me out. The earl—the old earl—ruled over us. Reigned, is better. An old-fashioned despotism. We could not question an edict, much less quarrel with one.”

“Mr. Quinn did not quarrel?”

“Mr. Quinn,” his voice dripped sarcasm, “ran away.”

“So now you are free of your despot. Now you are king.”

“Right. It’s six months on, nearly, we’re finally out of our black, most of us anyway, and we’re dashed well enjoying our liberty.”

“And the king is responsible for his kingdom.”

“Responsible? I try not to think on it.”

“And as earl, you maintain your properties and meet everyone’s expectations of you, all your promises.”

“Heavens, no.”

“Because you are no longer merely responsible for yourself, but for your grieving mother, your workers, your staff.”

“Mama takes care of all that.”

“For the moment.”

“You morbid little thing. Don’t you threaten Mama. She won’t have it.”

Nash looked up. She had her back to him, fists on hips.

Deacon sat unmoving, staring at her as if she were Medusa in the flesh. “I’ve found them.”