Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (22 page)

“Oh,” Lily said to Dr. Fforde—Matthew, as he’d reminded her to call him when he sat down next to her on the bench. He’d said he wanted to ask her something important. She had a fairly good idea what it might be.

It was after breakfast and the last day of the house party. The Teagardens would leave after lunch, but for now everyone had gone out to the terrace and were dispersed in different activities. Delia and Eloise were across the terrace, talking to Donwell, Hal was showing Rob something to do with an enormous ancient oak not far from the terrace, while Ivorwood, Ian, and some of the others had gone inside to the billiard room.

So it was very quiet where she sat with Dr. Fforde. Matthew. The perfect place for an intimate moment for which she was not ready.

Her one syllable hung in the air, awaiting others, but she couldn’t seem to speak, to advance a conversation that might change the way things were right now—more specifically, the way things were between her and Hal
.

Of
course
the two of them couldn’t go on sneaking around, teasing and pleasuring each other and behaving like fools with no concern for consequences. They couldn’t go on this way, but everything within her didn’t want it to change.

What a coward she’d become. Was this what she wanted for herself, a life of pleasure?

She drew on that inner hardness, that voice of moral authority that was the only thing she felt must guide her.

“Yes, certainly you may ask whatever you wish.”

He took her hand. She could feel the moment that Hal, still talking with Rob by the oak, perceived the change in her conversation with Matthew Fforde, but she made herself ignore the awareness.

“Lily, it can’t have escaped your notice that I’ve paid special attention to you in recent days. That is because I’ve recognized in you someone who values many of the same things I do.”

Chilling fingers of conscience dragged at her shoulders. Matthew Fforde was a good man and he deserved the full attention of any woman he honored by his addresses. Even if that woman didn’t deserve them.

“You do me great honor, sir.”

Hesitancy tugged at the edges of his mouth, a vulnerability that reminded her she’d not discouraged his attentions, which had led to this conversation. His brown eyes looked kind; she liked them, liked the seriousness in them.

“I am hoping that
you
will do
me
the very great honor of becoming my wife.”

Across the terrace Delia gave a bark of laughter in response to something Eloise had said. A bumblebee was buzzing near Lily’s arm, and though she generally found the sound drowsily pleasant, just now it was making her incredibly irritated. She ought to be thinking about Matthew Fforde, about the future he was offering her, yet she was letting her attention be drawn to a bee.

A fiery annoyance surged in her; she had no answer for Matthew, and that was because she had no idea who she was anymore. She’d been weak and let pleasure run away with her like a horse on a gallop. It had run off with her sense as well.

Dr. Matthew Fforde, waiting patiently and kindly for her response, was an antidote to all that had been going on in her life in the last few weeks. With him she would be on a reasonable, productive course. She would not be tempted to do unwise things. And not, she could only suppose, be pulled into linen closets for trysts.

She liked him. He’d not spoken of loving her, and perhaps he didn’t require love from her, or perhaps he assumed that it would grow.

She could say yes to him. It would change her life.

But how would that be fair to him, when even now she was thinking about Hal, and trying not to notice that his conversation with Rob allowed him to watch her from a distance?

“I…” she began, emotions roiling within her like a skein of yarn growing hopelessly tangled, each knot tightening as she tried to undo another. She had no idea what to say and hoped desperately that instinct—or some latent wisdom—would guide her into what was right.

He smiled a little. “You do not have to reply this very moment, Lily. Perhaps it’s better, unless you disagree, that you take a little time to think over such a large decision. A day or two?”

“How kind,” she said, feeling as though her voice came from very far off. She was relieved at this reprieve, and yet she must still make the decision. “And how reasonable.”

He laughed softly. “I do prize reason, Miss Teagarden. If you will permit me, your reasonableness is one of the qualities that first drew me to you.”

He got up and bowed his head graciously and left through the terrace doors into the manor. And all she could manage was to think that she’d clearly deceived the man well, because she’d done so many unreasonable things in the last week that she’d lost count.

She got up and, waving breezily to the others in a way that didn’t invite company, made for the path that led toward the lake. What she suddenly wanted more than anything was time alone, away from the splendor and customs of Mayfield and especially from its master.

The quiet of the day soothed her a little, the rhythmic sounds of a lark calling to its mate and the soft rustle of the leaves as a breeze sighed through the trees. How she missed the quiet of her yarn house, the tasks and the serenity and the solitude.

She reached the lake and wandered around it aimlessly for some time, listening to the soft lap of its water and trying to imagine what it would be like to be married to Matthew Fforde. To be with him for hours every day, to do the intimate things with him that she’d already done with Hal. To give up her shawl business and accept Hal’s offer to pay for the school, and to go on to the life of significant charitable work Dr. Fforde offered her.

Her mind was blank and unwilling to work with these thoughts, as if it were in revolt.

She sat down in the grass by the side of the lake and picked a few buttercups and twined them together into a chain. Absentmindedly she formed the flowers into a bracelet so that the glossy yellow petals of the flowers faced out in a row. She was holding her arm out to look at it, and acknowledging that she was avoiding the decision she needed to make, when a shadow came across her.

“A new kind of jewelry to go with the shawls?”

Hal. She stared at the lake, telling herself she must not look into his golden handsomeness. He was for her a kind of Medusa, and the sight of him enchanted her, turning her not to stone but into someone she’d never meant to be.

He ignored her lack of greeting and sat down next to her.

“You like to create things,” he said. “The shawls give you a lot of satisfaction.”

She did love making them, but that could never be her main reason for creating them—they were a means to an end. “I suppose.”

“There’s nothing wrong with doing something just because you like it, Lily. Everything in life doesn’t have to be productive, or worthwhile, or morally upright.”

“Well, I’ve certainly been testing that idea out this week.”

He laughed a little, but it wasn’t his usual wicked chuckle, and she finally couldn’t resist temptation anymore and turned to him. But he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking away, out across the lake.

“He asked you to marry him, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And you thought about me and told him no.”

“I said I’d think about it.”

He continued to stare out over the lake, a gorgeous viscount in his impeccably tailored dark green coat and tan breeches, his cravat snowy white against a little end-of-summer tan that still colored his skin.

And then he looked at her, his eyes dark with serious intent, his jaw seeming more chiseled, any trace of those playful dimples gone, so that he was almost a stranger to her, commanding and hard.

“Marry
me
, Lily. You know we are good together. Say you’ll marry me.”

Her heart leapt a chasm at his words. He wanted to marry her! He was serious, very serious. Now, in this moment, he wanted her and only her.

But she reminded her leaping heart that what Hal loved most was novelty and thrill. That she’d led him a merry chase, perhaps the best one he’d ever known because, angry and frustrated as she’d often been with herself and him, she’d doubtless been more resistant to his charm than any woman he’d ever known.

She felt a little ill. She cared for him, and she’d shared so much with him. But she couldn’t trust her future to him.

And she hadn’t needed a second proposal today to make her even more muddled.

“Hal,” she began gently, “you do me great honor. I never expected this.”

“Why not? I told you I wanted to court you.”

“But I thought it was a game to you.”

His brows slammed together. “It wasn’t a game.”

He was waiting for an answer. She would have to say words to him that would hurt her to say, but she must.

“Then I thank you, but I cannot marry you.”

Silence. She endured his gaze on her, his eyes heavy-lidded.

“Then you mean to go north with Fforde. You will run away.”

The hard note in his voice sparked something unreasonable in her. Why could he never see things her way?

“It wouldn’t be running away—if anything it’s running
to
something, to the kind of things we all should care about: discipline, valuable work, selflessness.” Her heart thudded sickly in her chest—she didn’t want to say more. But she must, so that nothing might remain between them. “And how can you accuse me of running away when your whole life has been nothing but going from one diversion to another just to avoid being bored?”

Hal looked away from her again, out over the lake. Did she have any idea how her words cut him? She would never see him as anything but a wastrel. He must accept that. All the things about him that attracted women were a mark against him, because they made her unable to believe he had any depth of character.

He could feel her looking at the side of his face, but the last thing he wanted right now was to look at her; it only twisted his gut harder. He was already churning with jealousy that Fforde had proposed to her.

He acknowledged, with a bitter twist of his mouth, that his plan to bind her to him with sensual intimacy had been fatally flawed because she would refuse to see pleasure as valuable, and she would judge herself unworthy for enjoying it. But how the hell could he have stopped himself from trying? He wasn’t made of stone.

And now her knight in shining armor had offered marriage, had beat him to the punch, to the loving blow he’d been working toward that might have bound Lily to him in all the ways he needed her to be—but above all, in love. Damned Fforde; he’d probably never even sullied her with so much as a kiss.

He forced evenness into his voice though he wanted to shout at her not to turn her back on what had grown between them. “And what about the linen closet and my bedchamber and all that we’ve shared?”

Her lips took on a tightness that said she’d pushed all the things they’d done out of her mind as soon as they were over. Probably put them in a mental refuse bin. He shouldn’t want to probe this—it would only be excruciating—but he would hear her articulate it.

“We both know that was just…”

“Yes? Just what?”

“Obsession! I can’t resist you. But that’s not love. It’s unhealthy and out of control.”

Inside, he flinched. “Do you love him then? Fforde?”

Her cheeks reddened. “I don’t owe you an accounting of my feelings. But I believe I could learn to love him. He is a kind man whom I respect.”

She couldn’t have been plainer. “I understand. You can’t allow yourself to consider me because you could never respect yourself if you accepted me.” He stood up and turned to go.

“Wait,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

That
he certainly didn’t want to hear. “No need to be sorry. It’s only the truth.”

He turned and walked away.

The Teagardens’ departure from Mayfield was uneventful, save for the significant amount of time that Delia and Eloise spent in taking leave of one another as the carriage stood ready to depart.

Lily sat next to Ian and tried not to look at Hal as he stood in the courtyard seeing them off. Hal was somewhat distracted by his brother and sister-in-law, who were departing as well, and Lily was grateful for the bustle and nearly ready to strangle Delia by the time they were finally able to leave.

As their carriage pulled away, her siblings called out their thanks, waving heartily, and Hal returned their courtesies. He never once looked at her, and she hated how that felt. Everything else aside, he’d become a friend to her, but of course she couldn’t expect him to seek her when she’d hurt him. Turning down his offer might have been the right thing to do, but ever since he’d walked away from her at the lake, she’d felt horribly bereft and out of sorts.

Her spirits were not improved when Rob told her he’d invited Matthew Fforde for dinner two nights hence. She still wasn’t ready to accept his offer, yet she knew that she’d never have another chance to so perfectly satisfy every hope she’d ever had for her future. She would use the time until he came to sweep away the emotions of the last days and prepare herself to accept this kind man. She really did like him. All would be well.

She’d meant to send a note to Nate as soon as they reached Thistlethwaite, but a storm blew in soon after they arrived, howling and beating rain against the windowpanes, and it became obvious he wouldn’t be able to dig that night. She was glad for the respite this meant—he wouldn’t be in danger, and she wouldn’t have to worry. Which only freed her mind to dwell on Hal and how much she missed him. She resisted this by busying herself in making arrangements with the housekeeper, reading a book of sermons, and helping Delia alter another of the dresses from her London Season.

Buck was delighted by her return, and she spent the evening by the sitting room fire, brushing burrs out of his fur while Rob went over account books and Ian experimented with a small flute. Delia, predictably, was eager to revisit their stay at Mayfield.

“As long as I live I shall never forget dancing with the Earl of Ivorwood,” she said from the sofa behind Lily, where she had draped herself in what she called a “Grecian pose,” which meant lying as languorously as possible, as if she’d just partaken of ambrosia.

“Doubtless it will remain a golden memory for him as well: the girl who would not speak when spoken to,” Ian said in between bars of a lively tune.

Delia threw a small pillow at him and turned to her sister. “What about you, Lily? And dancing with the most handsome viscount ever?”

“I’m sure I won’t forget that either,” she said. If only she could. Surely in time she would.

“But don’t you hope—” Delia said, leaning close to her. “That is, the two of you looked to be in such deep conversation at the ball, and at other times, too. Don’t you think there’s a chance he might wish to court you?”

Lily could feel both her brothers’ eyes on her as well. “I have no reason to think the viscount would court me.” Not now, he wouldn’t. Not since she’d told him she couldn’t respect him, that she couldn’t allow herself to love him. Leaving Mayfield hadn’t helped relieve the emotions pressing on her, and every time she thought of their final conversation she felt ill.

“Besides,” Rob said, “Matthew Fforde is coming to dinner tomorrow, and I doubt it is because he wishes to see me.”

“Oh. Dr. Fforde,” Delia said with an air of gloomy acceptance.

That night Lily stayed up as late as she could so that she wouldn’t have trouble falling asleep. But still she lay tossing and turning while lightning flashed outside her window. Eventually she threw back the covers and got up and went into the dark dining room and drank two glasses of brandy quickly, like medicine. She lay down again with the bed spinning, feeling as though she didn’t know herself anymore. She missed Hal terribly.

The next day early, she sent a note to Nate. She wrote that Roxham would doubtless be on the alert for him, and that she would watch for him all night from her window if he didn’t tell her what time he would dig. He sent a terse note back saying that he would dig near five in the morning. She meant to be there.

Determined to be productive in the meantime, she went to the yarn house and boiled up a pot of oak bark to make some brown dye and spun some yarn. The storm had blown in cool, bright weather, the very best kind for working, but she couldn’t seem to settle to a task and kept starting new things while leaving other tasks unfinished, which annoyed her.

In the afternoon she took Buck and went out to visit the sheep, who were happy to see her. But all the while, doing these familiar activities that used to make her content, she felt dull, as if there were no purpose behind them.

She used to know exactly what she wanted and who she was, she thought, as she brushed a gentle hand over Rosemary’s soft head, but now she did not. She felt like a rushing river of emotion. Of lust for Hal. Greed for more time with him. Envy that she wasn’t carefree like Delia or Eloise. Anger at her father for being weak. And heaven knew she’d been deceitful countless times in the last weeks.

A veritable crop of vices.

She’d never felt so fallible in her life, so imperfect, so untidy in her thoughts and deeds.

But what she also felt was… human.

***

The moon was low in the sky when she slipped out of Thistlethwaite very early the next morning. Autumn had truly settled in, and she’d put on an old black mourning gown to help hide her and wrapped a dark brown shawl around her against its chill.

She moved across the grass, the dew soaking her half-boots, and soon she was on the Mayfield side of the woods, near the pale glimmer of Nate’s light. Very softly, she gave the call they’d agreed on. A pause, and he responded.

She moved away from the tree line and settled into a leaning position against the rock where she’d hidden before and tried to filter out the faint sounds of his shovel pushing into the ground while she trained her ears toward Mayfield. Her eyes fruitlessly combed the dark lawn, her ears strained for any noise.

Though the other times when she’d come she’d been anxious about being caught by Hal, there had also been an element of playfulness, of each of them trying to best the other. Now it was different. She didn’t care about besting him anymore, and it wouldn’t be amusing if he came upon them. The time dragged by heavy and slow, as if coated in mud.

After perhaps an hour, she heard the signal she and Nate had agreed on. Had he finally found what he was looking for? She crept toward the woods to find out.

***

Unable to sleep, Hal had walked down to the lake around four, which seemed, lately, to be the hour past which he could not sleep. He’d gone there and gazed at the moonlight on the water and appreciated its lonesome beauty and wished Lily had been there to share it with him. Which was idiotic because the last thing he wanted now was to see her. And yet he could think of nothing else.

She had, like the bracing autumn wind, scoured him clean of everything else, so that he felt empty. It was an emptiness that couldn’t be filled with card games or chatter or whiskey, though he’d tried. Every hour dragged as if it were a strange new experience, and he felt murky and slow. Eloise had asked him that afternoon if he were sick. John had reminded him that only two days remained to the wager over the Woods Fiend, and teased him about how he would lose his new hunter. Hal had made the appropriate noises while realizing that he didn’t much care who owned that horse.

He could hardly stand himself.

He was just passing the half-completed folly—he supposed he ought to find some other work for Giuseppe and Pietro and simply deem the folly even more of a ruin than it was supposed to be—when he saw the light in the trees.

Perversely, it stirred a response in him as nothing had in the last two days. The Woods Fiend was a man Lily knew, a man she was helping, and jealousy surged, pushing his steps toward the wood.

As he drew near he became aware of the low murmur of conversation near the light, just inside the edge of the trees. Sunrise was not far off, and he could make out two figures crouching by the light of a lantern. He inched close enough to see.

Lily and a man were leaning over something on the ground.

“What the devil is going on here?” Hal said.

Lily yelped and the two sprang apart. Hal saw a box the size of a bread loaf lying on the ground between them, next to a hole at the foot of a large old beech tree. As the lantern picked out the man’s features, Hal saw that it was Nate Beckett, the farmer who lived on the other side of Thistlethwaite. The man Lily had been talking to after church.

“Er,” Lily said in a thready voice.

His blood boiled hotter every moment. Why was she here, why had she been here those other times, with Beckett? Upright Lily, who was going to marry Fforde?

He fixed his gaze on Beckett. “You are trespassing.”

Beckett held his gaze. “Yes. I’m sorry about that, my lord. It was necessary.”

“You
needed
to be on my land?” Hal flicked his eyes downward. “To dig. For this box, I presume. Which, being that it’s on my land, rightfully belongs to me.”

The dark shine of Beckett’s eyes flickered in the lantern glow, but he said nothing, doubtless aware of the egregiousness of his behavior. No doubt Beckett was also frustrated at having been caught, now, when he’d finally gotten what it was he wanted. Too bad.

Hal flicked a quick glance at Lily, not lingering. “And you,” he began, but she cut him off.

“I’m sorry. I know this looks bad. But Nate had a good reason to dig in your woods. Something was buried here years ago that belongs to his family.”

Why
was she defending Beckett? Were they lovers? He forced unruly anger down and kept his eyes on Beckett.

“Why should anything belonging to the Beckett family have been buried on Mayfield land?”

“Because it was your great-uncle who buried it, my lord,” Beckett said. “Something meant for my great-aunt.”

So it had to do with that old rumor about Great- Uncle Edmund romancing a farmer’s daughter. “You’re hoping for money, aren’t you?”

Beckett made no response, but Hal could feel Lily looking at him imploringly. He melted not a whit.

“If it is money,” she said, “it belongs to his family. And it’s not as if you’d need it.”

Ignoring her, Hal bent over to examine the chest.

“It’s locked,” Beckett said.

“Evidently. Give me the shovel.”

“I’ll do it,” Beckett said.

“The shovel,” Hal repeated. Beckett handed it over. Hal was more than happy, at that moment, to slam the blade hard against the old lock, which fell free at his first strike. He nudged the lid open with his foot, and they all leaned over to peer into it.

The lantern light caught the shine of gold. Hal picked up the small object, and as he brought it closer to the light, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It was a heavy man’s ring set with a large, square ruby.

He knew what this was. He’d never seen it in person, but he’d gazed at it all his life.

“This belongs to me, actually. It’s always gone to the second-born Waverly son. What do you mean by suggesting it’s yours?”

“Hal,” Lily began, but he cut her off.

“Did you know this was here all along?” he demanded.

She didn’t say anything for a moment, a hesitation that spoke of guilt. His anger surged higher.

She cleared her throat. “I didn’t actually know what was in the box.”

“Never mind, Beckett will explain.”

Beckett crossed his arms. He was a sturdy, dark-haired man, and in the dim light he looked formidable—though not as formidable as Hal felt, with righteous fury swelling his chest.

“I knew something was here because of a letter that was recently found, a letter written by your great-uncle to my great-aunt. He wrote of a gift he had for her, a gift he would bury in the woods, at the foot of a beech tree they knew. That’s the only reason I’ve been digging here.”

“You expect me to believe that my great-uncle gave away a family heirloom to your great-aunt. Why would he have done that?”

“I believe it was to be an engagement ring. I have the letter at home if you’d like to see.”

“What nonsense.”

***

Lily watched Hal, unable to take her eyes from his face. She’d missed him so desperately since they’d parted that even to see him now in this cold, angry state answered the deep yearning she had for him. He wore no coat or cravat but only a white shirt open at the neck and dark trousers.

She ached for him to sweep her into his arms, but he’d never looked less like he wanted to touch her. His tone, his posture—everything about him was distant and closed to her. She couldn’t bear it. And for Nate’s sake, she needed to get him to listen with an open heart.

“Hal, I know that most people have always thought your great-uncle was killed while trying to rescue Anne Beckett from the Woods Fiend. And now that Nate has this note from him, we know that was very likely what happened—but that this also wasn’t the whole story, because the young woman he was trying to save was his sweetheart. A woman who was very nearly your relative. He wanted her to have that ring.”

She searched his face in the gleam of the lantern and the weak, predawn light, and wished for more light to illuminate those familiar angles and lines, that expressive flesh that she’d come to know with her hands and lips. She saw there… nothing.

He kept his eyes from her and disciplined his features in a way she never would have expected; he was the viscount now, remote from other mortals. Nor had there been anything hard or ungracious in his voice. Whatever was there, whatever emotion he was feeling, he’d tamed it so that his voice held none of the resentment or anguish he must be feeling. It was a side of him she’d never seen before.

If he felt her eyes on him, he didn’t turn to her. His attention was fixed on Nate. He held out his hand, the ring on his open palm. “Very well, I agree it is yours.”