Barbara Metzger (10 page)

And then the earl did a remarkably foolish thing for a man of his experience and prowess, an act so spontaneous as to be totally out of character. He kissed Mrs. Henning. Right there in the trampled garden.

Right after she had been pawed at by a disgruntled drunk.

Right after he’d shown the violent side to his nature.

Right after Fred had reminded her that she was not good enough for the Earl of Rockford.

Right. She slapped him. Hard. Then she said, “Thank you,” again, for it was a good kiss—she could feel it to her toes—and a good lesson. This man would steal more than her money, and be just as heartless as the fallen groom, with less thought. After all, Fred had planned on robbing her. The earl was just passing by. “I will accept the watchman you mentioned, my lord. And I will keep the pistol more handy. I see now that no man is to be trusted, especially where supposedly vulnerable widows are involved. Good day.”

That was it? He’d saved her virtue and perhaps her life, and she was dismissing him, the Earl of Rockford, as if he were a flunky? Granted, he ought not have stolen that kiss, but she had not kept her lips locked together, either. At his haughtiest, despite smelling like a cabbage and not seeing out of one eye, and his knuckles stinging like the devil, he drawled sarcasm: “I see your gratitude is boundless, madam.” He bowed. “I shall not bother you again. Good day.” He walked toward his well trained horse, who had wandered off, but not far.

“Wait.”

Ah, he thought. The widow was not as outraged as she pretended. He would have raised his eyebrow, if he could. “Yes?”

“What about him?” She pointed toward the flattened greens.

Rockford looked at Fred, who had not stirred. “I doubt he will cause any further trouble.”

“But you cannot leave him here, in the garden.”

“You wished him brought into the house, perhaps?”

“Of course not!” Alissa wished she had slapped him harder; he was being so insufferable, simply because she had rebuffed his unwelcome—well, his unworthy—advances. “I wish him out of my sight!”

“I should bury him?” He studied his wrapped knuckles. “I think not.”

“Nonsense. You should take him to Sir George Ganyon.”

“Your landlord? Why? Does the baronet rent rooms to felons? I knew he was careful with his money, but that seems extreme.”

Alissa almost stomped her foot. “Sir George is acting as magistrate while the squire travels to Scotland.”

“In chase of my errant bailiff, I suppose. I’d rather have my Rembrandt returned than Arkenstall.”

“That is irrelevant. Sir George can see that this scoundrel is locked up.”

“At his place, Fairmont?”

She nodded. “Until he can be sent away.”

Rockford looked to his horse, who seemed to be content cropping the widow’s herbs. She’d likely blame that on him, too.

“I cannot carry the dastard double, not without laming Mephisto, whom I aim to ride to Sheffield. Nor would the stallion carry Fred across the saddle, if I were inclined to walk alongside leading him.”

A glance toward his tasseled Hessian boots indicated how disinclined he was.

“There is the cart,” Alissa suggested. “You could tie your horse to the back.”

So he drove off, the eminent Earl of Cabbage, behind a donkey, with a bloodied bully unconscious at his feet. Of the three, Lord Rockford wondered, which was the biggest jackass?

*

Rockford would have seen the former groom put on a boat, courtesy of His Majesty’s navy, but he really had to catch up to his valet and his carriage. He would have to raise the valet’s salary, of course, when the man saw his current state, but there was no help for it. So he drove into the courtyard of Fairmont, an ugly, squat stone dwelling. Ugly, squat Sir George came out to see for himself his noble neighbor driving a donkey cart.

Rockford delivered the now-groaning groom, and he delivered a scathing lecture on the rules concerning social responsibility, the care of dependents, and the maintenance of thatched roofs.

From a man who had not inspected his own estates in two years? Sir George guffawed. “Great joke, Rockford. Never knew you for a wit.”

He could not start another melee, not in front of the baronet’s gaping servants, so he nodded curtly, smiled slightly, and refused to come inside for a drink. He did get Sir George to agree to look after the widow’s welfare, including returning the donkey cart, having his men watch for suspicious strangers, and putting a new roof on the cottage.

All of which cost money.

*

“So you see, ma’am,” the large-nosed, short-legged man told Alissa, “I’ll have to raise the rents, come the new year.”

She had been forced to invite the baronet in for tea when he drove the cart back, leading his own mount, a brute as ill-natured as its owner. She’d sent the boys to the stable with the donkey, away from the curling lips and darting eyes of both the stallion and Sir George Ganyon. Sir George’s ears were too big and full of hair to flatten back like the horse’s, but they would have, when he noted that the donkey got a warmer welcome than he did.

Alissa put down her cup untasted. “But we agreed on a two-year lease, which is not up until next summer. I cannot afford any more.”

“Tut, tut.” He brushed crumbs off his protruding belly and smacked his fleshy lips as he reached for another macaroon. He nodded toward the plate of sandwiches and biscuits, which Alissa had prepared in case the earl returned with the donkey. “You are living well enough off his lordship’s bounty.”

“But that will end when he makes other arrangements for his sons.”

Sir George lowered his head, revealing the bald spot in his mouse-brown hair. Sons were another sore spot. He had none, after burying two wives. The widow had two off that weakling Henning who’d died of a chill, the milksop. Rockford had two dead wives, too, but had two sons to show for it. One was supposed to be sickly, but the other seemed healthy enough, if a bit scrawny. Young Rothmore was a regular hellion, he’d heard, but the cub could sit a horse well, the hunt-mad baronet had noted.

He had no sons. That was simply not fair. He did not particularly like children, but that was not the point. He found the younger Henning boy shy and sissified. The sprig clung to his mother when she brought him by with the rent. The older one was distant and distrustful. Standoffish, just like the widow. He’d teach them all the proper regard, the baronet vowed, someday.

Meantime, here Sir George was, nearing the mid-century mark, with no sons to leave his lands—and no brawny lads to work them for free until then. He did not even have a daughter to give him a son-in-law to help farm, or grandsons to inherit Fairmont. Rockford’s visit had reminded him all over again. He’d also reminded the baronet of the drab young widow residing in that old run-down cottage no one wanted. If a nob like Rockford were interested, perhaps Sir George ought to take another look.

She was pretty, Ganyon supposed, in a delicate way, with her neat brown hair and her clear skin. He preferred his women lush and lusty, redheaded and warm-bodied, like Lucy down at the tavern. Mrs. Henning was slight, with barely enough meat on her bones to cushion a man. He couldn’t like that bony chin, either,
if it meant she’d be obstinate and
argumentative, but she did fill out
the
top of her gray gown nicely enough. She wore plain, serviceable, obviously home-sewn clothes, which frugality he admired, but she wore the airs of a lady, too. Sitting straight like she had a poker up her behind. Bah! Everyone knew she was nobbut the daughter of Alexander Bourke, a land manager with no lands of his own. Despite that useless education Bourke had paid for, she was no better than she ought to be either, according to local history. Hadn’t she run off to Gretna with that duke’s son just in time to keep the first boy’s birth legitimate? Henning’s people never gave them tuppence, he’d heard, because it was such a misalliance.

Still, that was, what, ten years ago? He’d never heard of her playing fast and loose on young Henning, nor after the chawbacon stuck his spoon in the wall. Lucy at the Black Dog was available to any man with the coin. Mrs. Henning acted as if she was unavailable to any man, at any price. Until Rockford came. Well, the earl was never going to marry the jade. Sir George had a better offer to make her.

“My housekeeper just left,” he put into the silence of Alissa’s mental calculations of rents and interest rates.

He was offering her the post? Alissa could do it, she supposed, although she had no experience running a large household. Working for the old skint was not something she could look forward to with enthusiasm, either. Nor did she like the notion of her boys having Sir George Ganyon as a model of manhood. She had been to his house a few times, and it appeared to be as ramshackle as the baronet, with his food-stained shirtfront and gray-tinged neckcloth. His hunting dogs appeared to have the run of the house. The horses might have too, from its condition. Talk in the village was that the baronet refused to spend his money on repairs or sufficient servants, but Alissa was used to hard work.

She did more computations. Whatever Sir George paid—and it had to be more than she was earning now—she would be better off. With no rent to pay or food or coal or candles to buy, she might even be able to put some money away for a dowry for Aminta. Of course, she would no longer be able to take her sister to neighborhood gatherings. Alissa doubted she would be invited once she went into service. Perhaps the vicar’s wife would agree to chaperon Amy to the local assemblies along with her niece. Amy would
not
become a servant, not while Alissa could draw breath.

Then she had an awful thought. What if the balding baronet did not mean for them to live at Fairmont with him? After all, if he were such a nipcheese, he might balk at feeding three extra mouths besides his new housekeeper. He might intend for her to come daily, leaving her boys with Amy, working in exchange for the rent on the cottage. Gracious, she would be in worse straits, with no time to give lessons, and no time for her sons.

She would not do it. They could all move into rooms in the village if they had to, above the butcher’s shop or the lending library. The boys would miss the freedom of the cottage, but they would be closer to their lessons. Perhaps they could run errands to earn a few coins. Without the garden, they would need the extra income.

As if reading her thoughts, Sir George mentioned her sons. “I suppose I will have to pay for their schooling, when I don’t need them for harvest or haying or sowing season, of course. And they’d have chores, naturally. Horses don’t clean their own stalls, eh?”

He would pay for his housekeeper’s children’s education and let them ride his horses? Goodness, all the stories about his cheeseparing ways were wrong, and Alissa would make sure
everyone
knew it. She offered him the plate of pastries again. “Then you would have all of us live with you?” she asked, to be certain.

He took another macaroon. “Where else? I ain’t paying for any pricey boarding school.”

“And my sister?”

“How old’s the chit now, seventeen?” When Alissa nodded, he stopped chewing, but did not stop speaking, so crumbs dribbled over his thick bottom lip onto his paunchy lap. “Old enough to marry her off, I suppose.”

“That was my thought, too. I have great hopes for the winter assemblies.”

“Right. Get her fired off before she gets notions in her head. Can’t have m’wife’s sister going for a servant. Wouldn’t look good.”

His…wife?

Chapter Eight

“Your…wife? I thought you said your housekeeper had left.”

“Right, and I see no reason to hire another one. Never do a lick of work anyway, always complaining. Might as well have a wife, if I have to hear the whining. And I need a son. Two would be better, just in case. You’re a proven breeder. Good hips.” He waved the half-eaten macaroon at her lower body. Then he waved it in the air. “And a good cook. What more can a man ask, I say?”

He could ask if she wished to marry him. Alissa did not. Trying to be polite instead of paralyzed, she said, “But…but I had not thought to marry again.”

“Naturally you hadn’t. Who’d take a female with no particular consequence, no dowry, and a parcel of dependents? I thought long and hard about it myself, but don’t want to spend the blunt to go up to London to find a chit to marry. All of ’em are empty-headed anyway, so you’ll do.”

“I don’t—”

“Now don’t go getting missish on me. A woman in your position can’t be expecting bouquets of flowers and pretty words. Never wrote a poem in my life and don’t intend to become one of those artistic idlers now. You’ve had all that romantical claptrap once already, anyway, and look where it got you. No, you’re a widow with boys to raise; I need a wife. Simple enough. You can’t afford to be picky.”

She could not afford a raise in her rent either, but marriage? To Sir George? As awful as working for the baronet might be, the idea of wedding the boor was a great deal worse. He was using his fingernail to dislodge a bit of macaroon from his teeth. “I appreciate the honor, Sir George, truly I do—”

“Yes, yes. I suppose that’s what they taught you to say in that fancy academy your father sent you to. A waste of blunt, if you ask me. But get on with it. I have things to do, you know.”