Jo Goodman (20 page)

"No."

His nod was meant to encourage her. "Go on, then."

"It's still to be seen whether you can collect on the wager in the earl's absence. And there's the matter of Severn's charges. Ceding Weybourne Park to you will only occur after a great deal of scrutiny. If indeed every turn of fate favors you, and Weybourne Park falls under your control, you've yet to show that you can manage the estate. It's all very well and good to make promises of financial generosity to my cousins, but do you have the means to support them? Weybourne Park takes a great deal of capital to run and if you think to turn a profit, as you Yanks are so fond of doing, think again. This estate will demand the last shilling from some very deep pockets before profit is possible—and that's if you hire a competent manager who knows how to treat the tenants and won't alter the books for his own benefit."

Colin continued to look at her consideringly. He wondered how long it would take before she exhausted herself. "Finished?"

"No," she said firmly. "Absentee landowners are a blight on this country. There are already too many men like my uncle who believe they can be supported with very little effort on their part. The tenants are neglected, the land overused. When crops fail, the weather, the pests, or the tenants are blamed. No one looks to the policies that are strangling trade and the will of the workers. What do you, an outsider, know about our politics? And how will you respond thousands of miles away plying your ship through the China Seas? Your roots aren't here. There can't be anything about Weybourne Park that you find satisfying beyond the means by which you think you earned it. What happens to the people who live here when you decide you've played overlong with this toy? Are all of them ever subject to the same whims that brought you here in the first place?"

Passion gave Mercedes's voice a husky resonance and her cheeks were touched with high color. She glanced at the clock on the mantel behind Colin. "You can still make the London stage, Captain Thorne. It would be better if you left. No one wants you here."

Colin said nothing for several long moments. Then, "Have you said your piece?"

Disheartened that he wasn't running for the door, Mercedes merely nodded.

"Then have a seat, Mercedes," he said. "I'm weary of looking up at you."

She knew the use of her given name was quite deliberate, meant to remind her of a familiarity she would rather not think about. There was no point in taking issue with him. He would simply do as he pleased. "I'm comfortable standing," she told him.

"It wasn't a suggestion."

As if the rug had been pulled out from under her, Mercedes sat. Her small rebellion was not to do it comfortably. She perched on the edge of the wing chair, holding her back rigid, her shoulders stiff, and her hands clasped tightly in her lap. In minutes her muscles would begin to protest her uncompromising posture but Mercedes set her mind to withstand it rather than surrender.

Colin stopped toying with the letter opener and laid it down. In contrast to Mercedes, he was almost stretched out in his leather chair. His elbows rested casually on the arms and his fingers were folded over his flat abdomen. He tapped his thumbs together. Inclined as he was, with his head at an angle against the back of the chair, Colin's obsidian glance appeared to be more hooded than usual. He looked down the length of his aquiline nose at her, his firm mouth slightly parted. Even the cut of his chin was more defined by this angle.

"That was quite a speech," he said at last. Without warning he rocketed to his feet and shook off the cloak of patient deliberation as if it had been a hair shirt. Colin came around the desk and hooked his hip on the edge as he had done during his earlier meeting with Mercedes. In this way he teetered somewhere between relaxation and readiness, comfortable yet primed. It was Colin's most natural state. "As you might imagine there are some things with which I take issue."

Mercedes nodded regally as if bidding him continue when in truth she knew she couldn't have stopped him.

"Aubrey is on his way to London, not to board the
Mystic
as you assumed, but to seek out the solicitor I've hired. I agree that it may take some time for me to lay claim to Weybourne Park, but have no doubt that I will do so. To me, your uncle's disappearance is little more than an annoying complication. It's interesting that his own children don't see it so differently." Colin saw Mercedes open her mouth to interrupt and he held up his hand. "I gave you your piece," he said. "Now I want mine."

He watched her swallow whatever thoughts had made it to the edge of her tongue. Satisfied, he went on. "You have a great deal to say about me taking the helm at Weybourne Park, but can you honestly tell me things will be better with Severn in control? When I put the question to Chloe she didn't think so. Sylvia actually shuddered, though perhaps she's given to dramatics. The twins made faces and I felt safe in taking that as a 'no.' "

As he spoke he saw Mercedes draw in her lower lip and worry it gently. She stared straight ahead, her gray eyes fastened on the wall of books opposite her. There was nothing there that interested her, he was sure. It was simply better than looking at him.

Her face was gravely set, but all the more lovely because of the simplicity of the attending features. Her brow was unlined and dark lashes shaded her eyes. The gravity of her expression was in the tilt of her chin and the thoughtful composition of her mouth. Except for the slight tug on her lower lip, the shape of her mouth was full and unmarked by a frown. She had not redressed her hair for dinner and the long day's activity had taken its toll on the severe style, softening it by loosening some of the pins and letting wisps of it free to frame her face with rich chocolate color.

His eyes dropped to her neck. As if she could feel his stare she broke her rigid posture long enough to lay one hand over it. It was the briefest touch, more soothing than protective. That gesture angered him almost as much as what lay beneath it. Mercedes Leyden shouldn't have had to comfort herself.

"As to my pockets," he said, "I can assure you they're deep. Not bottomless, but deep. I've mostly been rewarded for the risks I've taken and sometimes I've just been damn lucky." It was as much as she needed to know about the state of his finances. "I've looked around Weybourne Park, and I'm quite aware of the money it will take to make her yare again."

He paused at her puzzled look. "It's a sailing term. It means make her ready."

For Mercedes it only bore home the obstacles facing him. Weybourne Park wasn't a ship. She'd never even considered the land having a gender, yet Colin referred to the estate as if it were a woman.

Colin went on, ticking off points on his fingers. "The main grounds are well kept, but I doubt the same can be said for the land the tenants farm. There are repairs needed on the roof. Water damage to various rooms. The artwork's been decimated. Carpets need replacing and the wine collection's been savaged. And I haven't been privy to every room or the stables."

At the end of his recitation he saw Mercedes blink once. It was the only sign of her pain.

"As for employing a manager, I already have one in mind. I have confidence this person will be able to handle all the things you mentioned: the tenants, the land, the crops, the finances, the policies, and the politics. I have reason to believe my manager can gain respect of the locals and return Weybourne Park to the showplace it was meant to be."

Mercedes cringed. Weybourne Park wasn't a showplace.
It was her home.

"As for being an absentee landlord," Colin said, "that's yet to be decided. I have no intention of being kept ignorant of what progress is being made here. If I leave, I'll visit often and stay as long as I'm able."

She wondered how he defined "often" and "long." Mercedes didn't ask. It shouldn't even matter to her, she thought. She wouldn't be at Weybourne Park to notice.

"As for roots," he told her, "they were torn out from under me when I was eight. In the twenty-one years since, I've taken pains to see that it can't happen again."

The sea was a perfect home for him, she realized. No one could uproot what wasn't planted. Then he surprised her.

"Weybourne Park is the closest I've come to taking back what might have been mine. I don't take this acquisition lightly, in spite of what you think. It wasn't a whim that put it in my hands. It was
my
effort and the effort of all those at
my
command that made it possible. I'm not the Earl of Weybourne and I don't aspire to his title. Let Severn have that dubious distinction if it's something one inherits.

"I don't look upon Weybourne Park as a trifling toy. I'm a man, not a child, and my interests are sustained, not fleeting. No one here needs to worry that I'll show the same disregard for this property as your uncle. If the tenants and the servants and those in my employ work with purpose and dedication they'll be provided for because they've earned it."

Colin let this last sink in before he made his final point. "And you're wrong to think there's nothing beyond the getting of this estate that satisfies me."

Mercedes had had enough. "Really?" she asked coolly, raising her face to him. "And, pray, what else is there you find satisfying?"

The edge of a smile shaped his mouth. He uttered a single word, "You."

Chapter 6

Mercedes had every reason to hope she would fall asleep easily that night. The events of the last thirty-six hours had exhausted her, and she hadn't enjoyed much rest the evening before. As if that weren't enough, she drew her own bath water and lingered in the tub until the water went from steaming to tepid to cool. It was only as she was facing the prospect of actually climbing into the four-poster that she realized it would serve no purpose to do so. She would never sleep while the thoughts she had now were still tumbling through her head.

Colin Thorne's voice would not be silenced. His surprising announcement echoed without becoming any weaker. Repetition did not reduce its volume or power as it rolled through her mind. She could hear herself ask faintly:
And, pray, what else do you find satisfying?
And the answer, clear, distinct, and reverberating:
You. You. You.

He had excused himself then. Mercedes only counted herself fortunate that he had not kissed her, for she had a picture of herself gaping at him and he had taken that as an invitation once before. If she could have found her voice, she might very well have screamed.

It was the idea of becoming hysterical that actually calmed her. It had never been her way to draw the notice of the others when she was upset, and she had no intention of allowing Colin Thorne to be the catalyst for change now.

Mercedes chose not to follow him and demand an explanation. It was her preference to pretend the exchange had never taken place, and she was successful for a time. The twins' bedtime rituals provided her with an agreeable diversion and if she went about the routine of turning down their beds and scrubbing behind their ears with more enthusiasm than usual, neither boy brought it to her attention. Both of them agreed, however, that her storytelling that night was unusually inspired.

After settling Britton and Brendan in their separate rooms, Mercedes prolonged the moment when she would be alone by checking on Chloe and Sylvia. The girls weren't artful enough to mask their surprise at seeing Mercedes, but their invitation to have her join them was genuinely felt. The topic of conversation was weddings, specifically Chloe's, and while Mercedes knew her cousin's lavish plans were only dreams prompted by Colin Thorne's promises, she wouldn't let herself think about that and entered into the spirit of the conversation.

Now, as she slipped her nightdress over her head, Mercedes wondered that she had done it. On the heels of that thought guilt arrived as her emotional companion. Mercedes sat down heavily on the edge of her bed and stared blankly at the opposite wall. It had been irresponsible to let Chloe go on making plans as if they could happen, but to join in and make extravagant contributions of her own was reckless.

Turning back the bedside lamp, Mercedes curled on her side on top of the coverlet. It was a fleeting thought to place blame squarely on Colin Thorne's shoulders, but the problem wasn't his promises, only that everyone wanted so badly to believe in them.

Everyone.

Including her.

Weybourne Park restored. It was a gloriously heady thought, the power of it almost seductive. Even the fact that she would have to accede to the demands and directions of an estate manager seemed secondary in importance to having the park's affairs in order again. She might have to give up some say, but she would not have to give up her home.