Emma Jensen - Entwined (10 page)

Isobel frowned. "Why on earth would you be nervous?"

"A good question, certainly. By all appearances, I am the one in control."

It was not merely appearance. Isobel believed the man to be very much in control of both the situation and himself.

"You are a formidable presence," he continued. "Restless, disquieting and, I would say, volatile."

"I disquiet you?"

His lips twitched. "Ah, you like hearing that. Your pride takes odd sustenance, I see." He reached for his plate, then pushed it away. "God, I cannot stomach any more of this disgraceful food. That will be one of your duties."

"Cooking?" she asked, surprised.

"No. Simply overseeing the kitchens."

Well, at least they seemed to be getting down to important matters. "Not the usual task for a secretary, my lord, but I daresay I'll manage it."

"I daresay you will. As for the secretarial duties, I will require you to deal with such correspondence as still reaches me. Then there are various concerns of my tenants. And I will ask you to..."

"Yes?"

"I will ask you to read to me, Isobel."

"Letters? Estate business?"

"Sometimes." His face was turned away from her now. "But more than that, I should like to hear literature. Poetry. I have... missed such things."

Isobel was stunned, and unwillingly touched. How could she not be?

This moody, damaged man wanted her to read poetry. "I can do that for you," she said softly.

"Good." With an abruptness that startled her, the breath of melancholy vanished, replaced once again by aristocratic crispness. "I will also expect you to accompany me to London in two weeks' time. I will have need of you both at home and at social functions."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Social functions, Isobel. Soirees, balls, evenings at the opera. You are not wholly unfamiliar, I think, with such matters."

"I'm not, nay, but, well, it hardly seems the province of a secretary."

"No more so than are the kitchens. I have somewhat of a revision to make to your title. I need you to be more than a secretary."

"You will pay me to be a companion, then?"

"In a manner of speaking." As she watched, his features took on the familiar, granite resoluteness. "Tell me, if you would, why you think you would make a poor mistress."

The question caused Isobel to choke on her wine. "Really, my lord. That is a highly improper question."

"Thus far, this is a highly improper arrangement. And you were the one who brought up the subject earlier."

It was, and she had. "Very well, then. I've no talent at toadying, my lord, nor at deception."

"Mmm.
Helpful traits in a ladybird, to be sure. Is that all?"

"You seem to know I've neither the face nor form for such a position."

"True, I have not seen your face, but you seem to have all the requisite curves in the right places."

"How...?" She felt herself blushing as she remembered their first contact. "Why are you doing this, my lord? Sporting with me."

"Interesting choice of words." Across the table, Oriel tapped his fingers in a slow rhythm on the tablecloth. His face was impassive, unreadable. "I am merely trying to ascertain just what you believe yourself capable of.

Honesty, of course, and loyalty. Emotion and affection. Pride. Yes, there is a certain proud arrogance to you." He leaned forward. "What of vengeance, Isobel?"

"What?"

"Vengeance. If someone did you ill, would you strike back?"

"Nay." She thought of Maggie, of Tessa. "But I'd strike hard against anyone who harmed those I love."

He eased back in his chair, eyes sharp now, and said, "Marry me, Isobel."

The silence stretched longer than the table, long enough to make Nathan think she had not heard him, or did not believe what she had heard. "It is a serious proposal. I am asking you to marry me."

"Dia s' Muire,
you've gone daft!"

It was not quite the response Nathan had expected, and it certainly was not what he would have chosen, but he was not really surprised. The possibility had occurred to him more than once in the last hours that he had, in fact, gone a bit daft. He considered validating her assertion but opted instead for cool assurance. "Not at all. Do you think only madness could prompt such an offer?"

"Aye, that or a very poor understanding of what an employer should be about."

"I'm about seeing to my needs, Isobel. And, though you might not believe me, yours as well."

"You don't know me well enough..."

"Well enough to what? To marry you, or to know what you need?"

"Oh—either!"

He could almost feel her agitation across the length of the table and it heartened him. It was the latter of the two possibilities that bothered her most: the concept that maybe, just maybe, he had an idea of what she needed.

"I know enough of both, I think. You will give me fealty." He raised his hand before she could say anything. "You cannot help it, not with your nature and certainly not with your family's future at stake. I am perfectly confident on that matter, so you need not waste your time arguing just for the sake of spiting me."

Her indignant hiss told him she had been prepared to do just that. He fought a smile as he continued. "Your intelligence will be invaluable as well. In fact, it was that which set me on this path to begin with." Not precisely true. Her attention to his bleeding hand had done as much, but that was not something he could tell her. "And I can provide what you need."

"What might that be, if I may be so bold as to inquire?"

Ah, she was piqued now. And frightened.

"I can give you my name, Isobel, and the title and wealth that come with it."

"That
is what you think I need? Tisn't merely daft you are, Lord Oriel.

'Tis positively deluded if you think I see life in such terms." She shoved away from the table then, sending her chair thudding backward. "I'll not sit for another minute of this!"

Nathan waited until she had reached the door. "Think of Tessa."

It was low of him, he knew, but expedient.

It certainly stopped her in her tracks. "What do you know of Tessa?"

"Your father is a garrulous man. I hardly need to tell you that."

"What are you telling me, then? That you'll see my sister done ill if I refuse your... I cannot even call it a proposal!"

"It
is
a proposal, Isobel. A perfectly honorable one. And no, I would never be so callous as to harm the girl. On the contrary. I'm prepared to see to her future well-being. Margaret's as well."

She said nothing. Taking advantage of her silence, he pressed, "You'd do well to think about it. Will you be content to live out your life as a spinster in a small Hertfordshire village? Something tells me you want more than to wither like a rose left on the vine. You are unlikely to receive another offer of marriage. Certainly not one from a man able to give you what I can. You are twenty-five. Young, perhaps, in the scope of the world, but on the shelf as far as marriage is concerned. You are fiery of temper, too, and—"

"Plain. You may say it, my lord. 'Tis no secret." Head spinning, Isobel gripped at the door frame as if every ounce of her equilibrium depended on its support. "I might well not be a young man's dream bride, but 'tis the right of even a plain woman to refuse an offer from—"

"A man unwhole in body and mind? You may say it, Isobel. But I think we both know I am not truly unsound of mind. No, I am entirely sane and, I think, wiser than you."

"A wisdom that escapes me," she shot back.

"Yes, I am beginning to see that."

He was so calm. Even the trail of soup spots trailing down his lapel could not detract from the fact that he was every bit the lord of the manor.

Nervous, he said. Aye nervous as a lion with a mouse beneath its paw, Isobel thought. His confidence set her teeth on edge. "I do not have to stay here," she managed.

"Yes, actually, you do. But I will certainly release you to the dubious safety of your chambers for now." She was halfway out the door when he added, "You will attend me in the library at nine tomorrow morning, Miss MacLeod. Your father left something of a mess."

Aye, he had indeed. "We are done with it, then? This marriage nonsense?"

His laugh did nothing to soothe either her turmoil or her frayed temper.

"Not at all. I had to ask. And I will keep asking."

"I will keep refusing."

"That, of course, is your prerogative. I am a reasonably patient man. But hear me well: I intend to have you, Isobel MacLeod, and I do not necessarily play fair at getting what I want."

Shaken and speechless, Isobel fled the room.

She'd had scant sleep and restless dreams.

Breakfast the next morning did nothing to improve Isobel's spirits. The debris scattered at Lord Oriel's place told her he had already eaten. After a few bites of the porridge Milch all but tossed in front of her, Isobel, feeling vaguely nauseated, made her way toward the library. For the thousandth time since she had fled the dining room and Lord Oriel's crazed proposal the night before, his words played through her mind.

Think of Tessa.

I can provide what you need.

You want more than to wither like a rose left on the vine.

Of all he said, that had struck deepest. He could not have known, couldn't possibly have known how many times, as she tended the pitiful gardens she coaxed into whatever patch of earth their residence afforded, she had likened herself to the plants beneath her hands. Tough, resilient, but easily bruised. And the only certainty being that of eventually withering.

Now, as she crossed the hall, she did something she seldom allowed herself. She stopped in front of a tarnished mirror and took a long look. It was simply her face: pale, the nose a trifle too broad and dusted with freckles, the mouth a fraction too wide above the gently rounded chin. Her eyes, too, missed the elusive edge of beauty even though she knew they were her best feature: wide-spaced, slightly tilted, and vivid green beneath hair so bright that it rivaled new-wrought copper.

There was nothing subtle about her appearance, nothing delicate, and certainly nothing that would seem anything but a mockery of the various portraits stretching along the walls. Nay, she had no place among the marchionesses there, nor did Lord Oriel have call to thumb his very patrician nose at his ancestors by placing her among them.

How easy it was, reducing the matter to something so simple as a portrait. If only she had better reason for refusing, or any heartfelt reason at all to accept. For all her years of dreaming, this was not a path she could ever have imagined. Nor could she imagine taking it now.

A night spent tossing in the elegant bed had left her with the conclusion that Lord Oriel was not mad. In fact, at the most superficial level, his plan made perfect sense. Of course he would want to return to Society, and he certainly could not manage on his own, not if he wanted his blindness to remain a secret.

In Society, where being seen was more important than seeing, with a supporting arm to help him avoid obstacles and a soft voice to prompt him, he would manage perfectly well indeed.

The question was why he would consider tying himself to an arm and voice so far beneath what would be expected of him. Surely there was a lady in his social sphere who could be trusted with the secret of his blindness, perhaps even one who would be able to convince him that secrecy was unnecessary. After all, vision was the sense best deceived.

Isobel's own eyes were clear enough. She found no pleasure in viewing her face, less still in seeing the outmoded, faded blue gown whose tight bodice succeeded only in pressing her full breasts into unattractive and uncomfortable slopes. Sighing, she drew her mended shawl closer about her shoulders despite the fact that there was no one to see.

She had written countless scenes in her mind, changing and rearranging her words so she would be able to greet the marquess with some grace. Of course, all these thoughts fled when she reached the library door. She cursed silently, swallowed, and knocked.

There was no answer. She rapped again, then hesitantly entered, inexplicably relieved at finding the room empty. In the absence of its owner, the place seemed altogether different. Perhaps it was due to nothing more than the fact that the draperies were drawn fully back, allowing the morning sunlight to flood in. In another time, another place, she would have been delighted by the scene. The countless leather-bound books alone would have enchanted her.

As it was, her eyes flitted briefly over the very male, very expensive furnishings and seemingly endless, book-lined shelves before they were drawn to the massive desk. Rather than being cleared, as she had seen it the day before, the surface was now covered by ledgers. Atop them was a single sheet of paper. Still uncertain of the proper move, she crossed the thick carpet and took a quick peek. A single word was scrawled diagonally across the foolscap, written in a bold scrawl and liberally dotted with smeared ink:
Read.

It was a command she could not possibly misunderstand. Opening the topmost ledger, she realized that Lord Oriel had left her the estate books for several years past. Sensible, she thought, and perhaps even courteous.

Instead of being thrown into this part of her duties with no preparation, she would have the chance to familiarize herself with the basic running of the place.

With only the faintest of misgivings, she settled herself behind the desk.

There was a chance the marquess would object to her use of his chair, of course, but she was certain she would hear his approach in enough time to move. He was most likely tearing through the fields on his monster horse and might well be gone for some time.

She opted first to skim, rather than read, each book. The entries were made in several hands, including one she recognized immediately as her father's. It was shaky in spots, and Isobel shook her head resignedly at the sight. It seemed Jamie had had no compunction against dipping into the crystal decanters across the room. He would have noted soon enough that his employer did not make a regular check of either the liquor supply or the books. Of course, he would have been completely fooled as to the reason why.