Mistress by Midnight (15 page)

“Nothing like Aysgarth, of course, but our own little waterfall, just over the hillock. And if I’m not mistaken, a cave behind it. I’ve been told the limestone hills are riddled with caves and caverns. We should have liked this place when we were children.”

They climbed over the hill, Laurette firmly encased in Con’s grip. She failed to see her young self roaming the fells or anywhere else, until they came upon the waterfall. It was not much, as waterfalls went, just a jumble of rocks and a vibrant splash of silver water eddying below the hill where they stood. The stream cut into the green and disappeared behind a giant boulder. But she was enchanted.

Con led her down the steep bank and to the quicksilver stream.

The air was instantly cooler here. The waterfall and stream it fell into were quite lovely—noisy, too. Good. It would spare her more conversation with Con. It had not been easy keeping her distance from him in the carriage when they were not engaged in lust. She might allow him—welcome—the liberties he took with her body, but each word she spoke was rationed. He was not her friend.

Once he was—her best and only. Laurette had loved her Dorset village home well, mostly because Con was her neighbor.

He had promised to marry her, to love her forever.

He had not.

“It empties into a small lake not far from the house,” Con shouted. “We’re not more than a mile away as the crow flies.” Con picked up a stone and skipped it. He’d not lost his technique. She thought of the pink skipping rock he’d given her all those years ago, easy for him to find amidst the gray
and black rocks of the Piddle. She’d left it in the crook of their tree for him to find before she lost Con and it for good.

“How did you come by the property? You never spoke of it at home,” she shouted back, forgetting her vow of silence.

Con grimaced and pointed upstream. They walked away from the rushing water until they could speak in normal tones. “It was left to my mother. Of course when my parents died, my grandfather had no interest in it. He couldn’t manage Ryland Grove as it was. There were tenants for a while. Then the house was more or less abandoned until my uncle was banished here, and I’ve had to spend a fortune on it since. I hope it’s in better condition than the road.”

It was his wife who had solved the problem of his uncle. He had wanted to be revolted when they first met, but he was not. Marianna Berryman was pretty, and far more genteel than he had expected a daughter of her father to be. She played the out-of-tune piano more than passably after their first supper together, and sang a duet with her dour chaperone, who had a surprisingly sweet voice. Her conversation was lively and intelligent.

But he felt managed, and so was mulish. For every prod of his uncle’s he became unresponsive, then finally mute. Even Miss Berryman gave up and turned her charm on his uncle, who puffed and swelled like a sun-bloated fish. There had been plenty of dead fish in the chalk beds of the River Piddle this summer, and hungry people who dared to eat them. Miss Berryman’s money would put finer fare on their tables.

Duty. An empty word compared with losing himself in Laurette. He had to—he must—

“Don’t you agree, my lord?”

Con roused himself. He had paid no attention to the conversation. “I beg your pardon?”

“I have just told Lord Robert that Papa will set him to manage one of your lesser properties—the one in Yorkshire. Some farm, I believe.”

His uncle looked stricken. The farm in Yorkshire was so
unproductive and negligible Con had been unable to sell it off. The barn was in better condition than the house, and that was not saying much.

Con looked at his fiancée with new appreciation. The Berrymans must be fully aware of the state of all Con’s holdings. They had made their investment in him with open eyes.

“See here,”said his uncle, “I’ve given almost ten years of my life to Ryland Grove. Raising my nephew. I’ll not be turned out like some—some—”

“Mad dog?” Marianna asked sweetly. Con noted she had one dimple in her rounded cheek.

“The nerve! I say, Conover, tell these people you’ll not stand for it!”

Con allowed himself a swallow of weak tea. Soon, that would change, too. There would be strong tea, and coffee, and port, brandy and wine, thanks to “these people.” He’d have oceans of liquid to drown in as he became Mr. Berryman’s son-in-law. Marianna’s husband.

“I don’t know, Uncle. The open dales. The bracing cold air. You might like it.”

“Damn you! It’s through my offices you’ve got as far as you have. You’d never be marrying without my say so! You need my signature.”

Con looked at his uncle but said nothing. He hoped it was perfectly clear what he thought of his uncle’s efforts and his signature. He might be forced to marry, but he was not going to like it.

“I think that’s a brilliant plan, Miss Berryman.”

His uncle rose up in anger, spilling his glass of whiskey on the carpet. Berryman’s whiskey. They had had no spirits in the house until Berryman moved in, bringing half of Fortnum and Mason’s Food Emporium with him. Con had choked on the fancy jam on his toast just this morning.

Lord Robert must have thought the better of his outburst, and sat down abruptly. Things must be worse for his uncle than even Con knew. He returned to his reverie, imagining
Laurette as his marchioness, wearing the Conover tiara. It was paste now, of course, had been since his grandfather financed a trip to the Sinai. But Laurette didn’t need diamonds and rubies when her love blazed so brightly. Love that Con had to find a way to extinguish once and for all.

The tiara had been restored, every diamond and ruby, and waited for her in a vault at Berryman and Sons Bank. The bank would be James’s, should he care to run it. If not, Con would see that it was managed well.

Breathless, Laurette stopped and shook a stone out of her shoe. “You’ve not been here before?”

“I came up last fall for a few days.” Con took his hat off and shook his mane of black hair in the sunlight. “That water looks refreshing.”

“We are
not
about to go for a swim,” Laurette said, firmly. “The sooner I get out of these dusty clothes, the happier I’ll be.” She hooked an arm in his and tugged him over the grass, guiding him for once.

“In a hurry to find a bed?” he teased.

“In a hurry to settle in. Travel does not seem to agree with me.”

She
had
looked a bit green around the gills the last few days, and had been silent as a clam. “Pity. I’d hoped to take you to some of my favorite spots in the world.”

“We only have four months left, my lord. I hardly think there will be time.” At least she’d given up tacking on the exact number of days. She took a long stride forward. A golden plover rose up from its nest and fluffed its feathers practically in her face. Laurette gave a little shriek.

“There now. You’d think you were a city girl,” Con said, laughing, catching a swirling feather and tucking it into the brim of her bonnet. “Last I was here, there were birds in the
house.
I do hope my caretaker has managed to evict them.”

Laurette glared at him. “Just exactly why did you bring me all this way? From everything you’ve said, I’m surprised you
can give up all your luxuries to camp out in the back of beyond.”

“It’s true the house was so dilapidated we couldn’t even sell it when we had most need to do so. The best of the acreage went long ago. But what’s left is family land. My mother was born here and I wanted to show it to—you,” he said quickly.

That had been a near thing. He knew he had to tell her the truth soon, but not when she might clout him with one of the rocks she kept tripping over.

They climbed up another hill and she was too out of breath to pepper him with more questions. Con was right. The weeks in London had turned her into a city girl, sequestered in her harem, and stuffed with pastries. If she wasn’t careful, she’d outgrow her new wardrobe.

Below her was Con’s “farm.” Only a man who lived with the remnant of Conover Castle on his front lawn could consider the substantial stone manor house with such modesty. It was a large gray rectangle with four chimneys and a swath of ivy growing up near the arched doorway. Pots of blooming flowers flanked the recessed door. The slate roof looked new and the odd-sized windows gleamed. Behind it was a collection of outbuildings in various stages of repair, but some new work had been done to them, too. Neat stone walls enclosed a large pasture. The overall impression cheered Laurette up considerably. A glimmer of blue through the trees must be the lake Con talked about. There was no sign of Tomas and the carriage in the crushed stone courtyard, nor, in fact, any signs of life.

“Welcome to Stanbury Hill Farm. I believe there must be chickens, but I’m afraid there is no other livestock at present.”

Laurette grinned. “They do not reside in the house, do they?”

“Not to my knowledge. There have been a few improvements since my last visit, and I hope that is among them. And rest assured, my great-uncle is gone as well.”

Laurette knew Lord Robert had been exiled quite against his will to Yorkshire. Both Marianna and her father had held him in the utmost contempt, although he had been useful to them in acquiring Con. Marianna had been surprised when his letters of endless complaint stopped arriving a few years ago. After investigation, she discovered that he had wandered off one winter day and never returned. It was presumed he had gotten himself lost in the moorlands and died, although his body was never found, even after a search in the spring. There were icy fells and water aplenty for an old man to have slipped from and into. The local woman employed as his housekeeper reported that Lord Robert had become increasingly difficult and irascible.

In Laurette’s opinion, he’d always been horrible. The man had made Con suffer growing up in a thousand little ways, from hiring vicious tutors who beat Con when he didn’t decline verbs properly, to bankrupting him through the Berrymans. She, like the rest of the villagers of Lower Conover, attended his brief memorial service, but none of them shed any tears.

“He let the house go, as you might expect, not that it was in good shape to begin with. The man would do anything to cause me trouble. It should be livable now after all I’ve spent on it, but the first order of tomorrow’s business is to get a crew together to repair that road. I can’t believe they didn’t tell me—” Con closed his mouth abruptly.

This was the second time he’d stopped himself from saying what he was thinking. “Who is they?”

Con took her hand and squeezed it. They both still wore their gloves, but she could feel the heat of his palm. Suddenly he looked so serious that she thought he might say his uncle was still a danger, walking the moors as a wraith.

“I had wanted this to be a surprise, but perhaps I should prepare you before we go further and enter the house. Maybe we should sit down.”

A gust of wind caught her skirts, and she struggled to hold them fast. Her last wish was to tempt Con with a sight of her legs right now. She dropped to the grass and arranged herself in her most forbidding manner. “This sounds ominous. Get on with it.”

“It’s not meant to be.” He pulled off a glove and ran his fingers through a thatch of bright green grass. “We will be spending the summer here.”

Laurette shrugged. “As you wish. As long as I’m home before Christmas.” She had already prepared herself not to see her daughter this summer. Thanks to Marianna’s generosity—and guilt—she had been able to see Beatrix for a week every year.

Ten years ago, after Con had been missing for months, Marianna had invited Laurette to tea, and she had reluctantly consented. They were neighbors in the country—it would have looked odd to avoid each other. When she had been presented to Viscount James Horace Ryland, Laurette knew she held a piece of Con’s heart in her arms. The handsome child, so different from her delicate Beatrix, won her over immediately. From there, one cup of tea had led to several years of ironic friendship.

Marianna had been her blunt self that first day.

“I know my husband loves you,” she began, once the nursemaid took James away.

Laurette had the choice of feigning shock or being honest. She had lived a lie too long already. “He married you,” Laurette said, equally blunt.

Marianna dropped a lump of sugar into her teacup, paused, then shrugged and added another. “So he did. I tried my best, but he was very unhappy. I came to love him a little, you know.” She gave a brittle laugh. “Foolish of me. I was
much older and wiser, or so I thought. I’m used to getting my own way. Papa spoiled me dreadfully. I’m afraid I simply expected Conover to fall prey to my charms.”

“You are very pretty. Elegant.” Everything about Marianna and her house was perfection.

“Yes, well, I am finding it ever more difficult to slim since the baby was born. I see your figure has returned to you.”

Laurette felt a hot blush sweep across her face. It seemed like hours before she found her voice. “You knew?”

Marianna pushed a pale curl from her forehead. “Not until after James was born and Conover disappeared. Papa didn’t want to worry me. But he always tells me everything. Eventually. The business may be called Berryman and Sons, but there are none, you know. Just me. I am his partner in all things. I would have married Conover even if I knew you were increasing, though. It had been planned for years. Conover just didn’t know it.”

Laurette put her cup down. The rattle of cup to saucer seemed very loud.

“You think me an evil witch, I’m sure, but I’m only telling you the truth. Papa had selected Conover for me before he started to grow whiskers. Even sent him to Cambridge so I wouldn’t marry some country dolt. Once he got his hooks into Lord Robert, it was only a matter of time. Of course, there were a few other candidates, but none of them suited me so well.”