Barbara Metzger (18 page)

Niles was reflecting that the woman he wished to make his wife could show a little more interest in his fidelity to her. Not that he intended to remain faithful once the wedding vows were exchanged and the marriage settlements signed, but he hoped for some sign of jealousy, possessiveness even, before the fact. If there was to be a fact. “Sight unseen?” he asked. “I’m afraid I need longer odds, my sweet Sydelle. What say that if I succeed, I also succeed with you, my pet? My honorable offer, naturally.”

“Naturally. And if you lose?”

“You can’t do this, Niles, not the dowager’s own servant. St. Cloud will kill you.” Elsbeth was horrified, but not as horrified as Juneclaire, on the other side of the boxwood hedges where Flame was nibbling at the last grasses. And Elsbeth, it seemed, was more concerned with danger to her brother than any damage that might be done to the poor downtrodden companion! Juneclaire could not hear Lady Sydelle’s answer as the group rode away.

The dowager was right. These people were scum. They were beautiful, Juneclaire’s peeks through the branches told her that, but they were cold and cruel. They were as exquisite as swans, and just as vicious close up. Lady Sydelle wore a scarlet habit with a tiny veiled hat perched coquettishly on her guinea gold locks, and her horse had specks of blood on its flanks from her spur. Juneclaire had never seen a man dressed as elegantly as Mr. Wilmott, or heard one speak so casually of ruining an innocent female. She almost wept to think of Merry and his precious offer. These three did not have enough honor among them to be worthy to shine Merry’s boots.

If they were representative of Lord St. Cloud’s friends and relatives, Juneclaire wanted even less to do with the Priory than before. She’d had no great esteem for the libertine earl since Mr. Langbridge related the man’s scandalous reputation, and that opinion was lowered a notch when she saw his grandmother’s condition. He kept her in, if not outright penury, then straightened circumstances, unprotected and locked away where he never had to see her. His very behavior gave the poor woman nightmares; his associates would put even that rough-tongued lady to the blush. The earl did not seem to care what havoc he wreaked on his mother’s delicate health either, or on his staff, from what she’d seen. Juneclaire, for one, wished he’d never get back from his latest mad jaunt, undertaken when he was in his cups. She pitied the poor girl he was going to marry and hoped he never found her.

S
t. Cloud returned two days later. Even before his horse was led away, the dowager knew he was home via the servants’ grapevine. She calculated how long before Fanny or his man Todd filled St. Cloud’s ears with gossip, sending him posthaste to her doorstep demanding an explanation. She sent Juneclaire out early for her ride, saying that her old bones felt snow coming on. Miss Beaumont had better exercise the mare early, she claimed, lest Flame get too rambunctious from standing around all day.

Her grandson arrived not ten minutes later and managed to hold his patience in check for at least five minutes more.

“Grandmother,” he said in an affected drawl after the formal greetings, “there seems to be a small creature stalking the tassel of my new Hessians.”

Lady St. Cloud was sure he’d have his quizzing glass out, the fribble. “Adorable, ain’t he?”

The earl did indeed have his glass out, but he was swinging it on its ribbon to the delight of one of the least prepossessing representatives of the feline species he’d ever seen. “Adorable is not quite the word I would have chosen, my lady. But, pray tell, how does it come about that you have a cat, no, any animal, in the house? You surely never approved of such a thing during my lifetime.”

Oh, how the dowager wished she could see his face! “I’ve changed my mind, St. Cloud, since my new companion insisted.”

Aha! The new companion! St. Cloud was on his feet and pacing. His forceful appearance was marred, had the dowager only seen it, by the scrap-cat chasing after him, intent on those dangling tassels. “Insisted, is it? The Dowager Countess St. Cloud taking orders from some encroaching female? They were right: you are not fit to be living alone!”

“I am not living alone, you nodcock. That’s what the girl is for. And if any of those sponge-mongers up at the Priory dared to suggest I am missing a few spokes in my wheel, I’ll have their guts for garters, see if I won’t.”

The earl picked up the kitten and dropped it, with his quizzing glass on its ribbon, into the dowager’s lap before his boots were irreparably scored with needle claws. He cleared his throat. “We were speaking of the companion, ma’am.”

“No, St. Cloud, you were. I was speaking of the hangers-on and dirty dishes you permit to reside under your roof. Your grandfather, the earl, would be spinning in his grave.”

“He’d be coming back to haunt me if I left you here with some strange female whose name nobody remembers! They can’t tell me where she came from or why. For all I know, she’s here to stab you in your bed and steal the silver. You don’t understand about unscrupulous people, Grandmother, how they prey on the”—he was going to say old and infirm, thought better of it—“unsuspecting. She could cozen you into changing your will or—”

“Already have.”

“What?! I’ll see the bitch in jail first!” He struck his fist on the mantel.

“You’ll sit down, boy, and mind your tongue in my parlor. You’re giving me a headache.”

The earl sat, took a deep breath, and tried again. “My apologies, Grandmother. But I have tried for years to hire you a companion, a respectable female to bear you company and look out for your welfare, since you refuse to move to the Priory. I found women from the best of families, with unimpeachable references. Young women, old women, women I personally knew, by Jupiter! And you refused to meet any of them. Dash it, I would have hired one of the royal ladies-in-waiting if I thought you’d have her. But you, madam, without a word to anyone, take on a perfect stranger. Is it any wonder I am overset?”

The dowager hadn’t enjoyed a conversation so much in years. She should have been an inquisitor. “You always were pigheaded, boy. Do you think no one else knows what’s best for themselves? You’re a fine one to speak, clunch. I have found myself the perfect companion, and we suit to a cow’s thumb. Which is a lot more than I can say for you and your misbegotten engagement.”

The dowager stroked the cat during the following silence. When St. Cloud finally spoke, she could hear the sorrow in his voice. “There is no engagement, Grandmother. That’s the other thing I came to the Dower House to tell you. I haven’t said anything to the others yet, but I couldn’t find her. I left messages, deuce take it, I left enough bribes to finance Prinny’s new pavilion. I found her old housekeeper in London, who didn’t know what I was talking about. I promised Mother I’d get back to help with the blasted ball, but my staying in Town wouldn’t have made a difference. There’s nothing, Grandmother. She’s gone.”

Not even the dowager could enjoy torturing a broken man, even if he was her only grandson and a cow-handed chawbacon to boot. “About my companion . . .”

“You were right, Grandmother. It’s none of my business. If you are pleased, then I am pleased.”

“She was not entirely without references, you know. In fact, Langbridge, my man of business, brought her out to me . . . from Bramley.”

“From . . . ?”

“With Reverend Broome’s commendation. He mentioned something about church pews Mr. Langbridge couldn’t quite—”

St. Cloud was gone. Then he was back. “Where the bloody hell is she?”

“Why, I believe she is taking Flame cross-country. There is nothing like a good gallop to put roses in a girl’s cheeks.”

This time he kissed her hand in farewell but said, “You know, my lady, you are lucky that only the good die young.”

 

If the dowager thought to send him helter-skelter over the Priory’s acreage, she sorely misjudged her grandson, and Flame. He left his own horse in the small stable and followed the only path that led away from it. If the old nag could make it farther than the second clearing, he’d eat his hat, which he’d left on the dowager’s hall table in his rush out the door.

He did not see them on the path, but then he heard a familiar off-key carol. The angel choir in heaven couldn’t have sounded sweeter to his ears. He followed the song through a break in the hedges, and there she was, leading the blasted horse like a dog on a leash. She was wearing the same tatty gray cloak—Juneclaire didn’t bother with the long-skirted habit for Flame’s daily constitutionals—and her nose was red from the cold. She was beautiful.

“Hallo, Junco,” he called.

“Merry!”

Neither knew how the ground was covered, but she was in his arms, or almost, looking up into his face. He was looking as handsome as Juneclaire remembered, certainly neater, in fawn breeches and a bottle green jacket, but his eyes looked tired, and the planes of his face seemed harsher. He’d forgotten how to smile, again. He held her shoulders and said, “Wretched female, I don’t know whether to shake you or kiss you.”

“Do I get a choice?” was all she could think to say. She felt her face go red at her own ungoverned tongue, but he pulled her closer, then yelped.

“What the deuces?”

“Oh, I am sorry. It’s a needle I’ve taken to carrying around with me.” Niles Wilmott had not wasted much time making good on his boasts to Lady Pomeroy. He’d tracked her down yesterday while she was out with Flame. First he plied her with heavy-handed compliments, then barely disguised hints of a financial arrangement. Finally he tried physical enticements, as if she could ever be attracted to a snake in gentleman’s clothing. Overdressed clothing at that. Forewarned was forearmed, however, and Niles would not be approaching her again soon. She hoped he died of blood poisoning. Merry raised one eyebrow, meanwhile, waiting for further explanation, so she said, “It’s in case I ran into that dastard from the Priory again.”

She instantly knew she’d made an error, for the hands on her shoulders tightened till she’d have bruises there. “What dastard? Who insulted you, Juneclaire? I’ll—”

“Oh hush, silly. I’m fine. Everyone has been so nice to me. Well, almost everyone. I have so much to tell you, but you tell me first, instead of glowering at me so. What are you doing here and why are you in such a taking?”

“I am upset, goose, for I have been looking for you for days now, nights, too, in Bramley and Springdale and London and everywhere in between, and you’ve been right here. If I don’t strangle you, it’s just because I am too tired. You have led me a fine chase, girl.”

“But why, Merry? We are friends, nothing more. I told you you were not responsible for me.”

“Nothing more? After a night in a barn? That made you my responsibility, Miss Beaumont.” That sounded too severe, even to the earl’s ears, and hope made him add, “I cared.”

Her hand touched the dent in his chin for an instant, and then she looked away, suddenly shy. “But . . . but how did you find me here?”

“I didn’t. I came home to lick my wounds, and there you were.”

“Home? You live here, at the Priory?” He nodded. “You’re not one of the earl’s disreputable friends, are you?”

“Worse,” he told her.

Juneclaire felt a hollowness in her stomach. “A relative?”

“Worse still.”

She’d known he was an aristocrat. That assurance and, yes, arrogance of his just had to be matched to a title, but the Earl of St. Cloud? If Flame had an ounce of speed left in her, Juneclaire would jump on the mare’s back and ride who-knows-where. Merry—the earl—could walk faster than Flame at her quickest, though. Juneclaire did the only thing possible. She kicked him in the shin with her heavy wooden-soled walking shoe. “You liar!”

The earl was wondering why he’d bothered to save his Hessians from the cat. “I am sorry about being the earl, Junco—sometimes sorrier than you can imagine—but I didn’t lie. I am Merritt Jordan.”

Juneclaire was limping away, at Flame’s speed. “I am sorry, too, my lord, for the earl is not a person I wish to know.”

“I did not lie to you about my reputation, Juneclaire, and I shall not lie now and say that it is undeserved. I am no longer that reckless, rebellious boy, however.” He took Flame’s lead out of Juneclaire’s hand and walked beside her. “Besides, you can help me mend it.”

Juneclaire ignored that last. “You’re not caring about your mother, from all I hear. Aunt Marta says you can judge a man’s worth by how he treats his mama.”

“That sounds like what a mother of sons would say. My mother has never been comfortable with me, Juneclaire, and I gave up trying years ago. It would take the patience of a saint to put up with her vapors, and I never lied about that. And didn’t Aunt Marta tell you not to listen to gossip?”

“Well, you aren’t kind to your grandmother either, and that is not hearsay. I can see for myself that you keep her on a tight budget. Those old servants, this one pitiful excuse for a horse. If all this”—she waved one mittened hand around—“is yours, that is unforgivable.”

He took that mittened hand in his gloved one and continued walking back to the stable. Juneclaire didn’t remove her hand. “Now who told you that faradiddle about my holding the dowager’s purse strings? Grandmother is one of the wealthiest women in the county in her own right. She could hire an army and operate a racing stable if she wanted. Have you tried to get her to do anything she
didn’t
want? She lives the way she does out of her choice, not mine.”

Juneclaire was thinking of some of the other things she’d heard to the earl’s disfavor when she remembered another item altogether. She pulled her hand away from his so fast, he was left holding her mitten, the odd, not-quite-finished one. “They say—and it is not gossip, for even Lady St. Cloud mentioned it—that you are engaged.”

“Yes.”

“Yes? That is all you can say, yes? You can hold my hand”—and make her heart beat faster, although she did not say that—“when everyone is waiting for you to bring your betrothed home as soon as you fi—oh.”