The Belligerent Miss Boynton AND The Lurid Lady Lockport (Two Companion Full-Length Regency Novels) (38 page)

To my husband, Mike, and our children, Anne, Michael, Edward, and Megan.

Kevin Rawlings had been the Eighth Earl of Lockport for some six months, but to date he remained singularly unmoved by the increased wealth and social status that were part and parcel of his new title.

Perhaps this elevation to the peerage had come too late. After years of waiting for his cantankerous, ancient Great Uncle Sylvester to finally stick his spoon in the wall and have done with it, years spent alternately borrowing on his expectations or running from his creditors, Rawlings' sudden solvency had not brought the instant happiness he had long believed it would.

As for his new title, all that seemed to have brought with it was the responsibility of finding a Countess and setting up his nursery posthaste to insure his line. The mere thought of entering the marriage stakes, that social frenzy that included visits to Almacks, a myriad of senseless to-ing and fro-ing—inane balls, rout parties, Venetian breakfasts, and other nonsense—was enough to make a grown man run for cover.

But there was nothing else for it. He was duty-bound to find himself a wife.

All the natural speculation as to whom Rawlings would choose as his lucky bride (his name was linked with no less than a dozen young misses in the betting book at Boodles), and the unending stream of insipid infants clamoring for him to throw his handkerchief their way did nothing to pique a spark of interest in him for any of Society's latest crop of debutantes. To make matters even worse, it seemed his barely hidden disinterest and almost Byronic moodiness only served to attract rather than repel the ladies, and the whole thing was becoming, quite frankly, more than a bit of a bore.

At long last the Season wound down and London became rather thin of company, leaving Kevin no nearer to finding a bride than he had been at the onset of the Season, but at least he wasn't tripping over giggling debutantes every time he dared to step foot outside his door.

Rawlings was left feeling fatigued, at loose ends, and on the lookout for something different to occupy his time. For months he had been blissfully ignoring the many impassioned pleas from his new man of business to present himself at his inherited country holding in Sussex, known for generations simply as The Hall.

Perhaps a change of scene would help to rouse the new Earl from his strange melancholy. Much as he dreaded inhabiting a chamber in the drafty old pile for even the two or three nights he thought to be the most he would be able to endure, a trip to The Hall might just be in order.

And so, his mind made up, Kevin Rawlings prepared to tool his new curricle down to Sussex to present himself to his staff and tenants.

As it turned out, it was fortunate his valet had a tendency to overpack.

Hattie Kemp shook her mop of coal black hair (of which she was secretly proud, as it was unmarked by even a single streak of gray, although everyone knew the cook was sixty if she was a day). "There her be goin' again, loppin' off ta the hills ta lay the long grass, lookin' fer all the world like some dreamin' looby."

She turned away from the kitchen door to threaten the maid, Olive Zook, who had taken leave to sneak a peek at the retreating back of the barefoot girl now running swiftly away from The Hall. "I'm tellin' ya wot I sees, Olive—not invitin' ya ta take a peek. Back ta work ya lazy, shiftless thing," Hattie Kemp warned, shaking her ladle at the now cowering maid who had already begun stumbling from the room.

"Yes'm, yes'm," Olive stammered, curtsying jerkily as she tried to make good her escape—her capacious apron pockets disgorging a myriad of bobbins, pins, wadded papers, and other private treasures that left a trail as she bounced and bowed her way out of the room.

"Daft, silly woman," Hattie Kemp muttered under her breath before taking one last peek at the hills and the departing girl's swirling skirts. "Ach, sweet child, yer smart ta take yerself off whilst yer can. When the new lordship comes, iffen he ever do, tis not likely ta be many more days like this'un fer the likes of yer." She blinked a bit of moisture from her eyes before resuming her own work, glad Olive Zook had fled and could not bear witness to her tears.

Meanwhile, the subject of Hattie Kemp's concern was happily skipping along the ridge of the hill that ran down to the cliffs bordering the Channel, her faded and worn gown billowing indecently high and her long hair whipping in the wind. She sang as she skipped, then whirled round and round in an innocently abandoned dance before finally dropping to her knees to gaze pensively out over the white-capped waves.

The fresh breeze coming in over the water swirled past the girl who shook her head to encourage her hair to fly back and away from her cheeks and forehead as she lifted her face to the warm summer sun.

The facial features thus revealed were not of a beauty that inspired poetry. There was a short, straight nose, quite an ordinary, everyday sort of nose; an average mouth—if not for the bottom lip being a fraction too full; a nicely rounded chin with only a slight cleft; a pair of unremarkable large, round blue eyes; and, clearly her best feature, two tiny shell-shaped ears.

Her coloring, however, was not in the least ordinary. She had finely shaped dark brows and long, equally dark curly lashes that thankfully bore no resemblance to the color of her hair. That mane of hair, for it was indeed a considerable amount, was neither red nor blonde but an almost orangey mixture of the two and, while possessed of a healthy sheen, it must be mentioned that it was stick-straight into the bargain.

She had the typical complexion of the red-haired, milky white and smoothly textured, including a tiresome inclination to redden painfully upon exposure to the sun. In addition, her complexion also harbored a lamentable tendency to freckle quite noticeably wherever that same sun touched, as it was doing, with the full cooperation of the girl, at that very moment.

Sinking back on her heels with a deep sigh, the girl stretched her arms behind her to the ground, arching her back and allowing her long hair to tangle in the deep grass. This movement revealed in detail her trim, almost boyish figure and long graceful neck. If it were possible to judge her height, taking into consideration her long-waisted body and the size of her slender, tapering hands and bare feet, she could be said to be of average height, neither gangling nor a pocket Venus.

Her gown tended to be less than nondescript; in fact, it was downright dowdy, not to mention ragged, patched and—like the rest of the girl—none too clean.

The girl sighed again, another deep, shuddering sigh, and rolled over onto her stomach to rest her head on her crossed arms. The sun rose higher in the sky as a few honeybees lazily patrolled the area, their progress undisturbed by the now sleeping girl. She slept on through the afternoon, her even breathing broken only by a few more heartfelt sighs, until a noise too loud to be ignored intruded on her dreams.

She woke reluctantly, wiping the sleep from her eyes and pushing her matted, grass-stuck hair carelessly behind her ears before slowly rising to pierce the misty distance with her gaze, for it was nearly dusk and the mist from the Channel had begun to roll in. It was impossible to see anything clearly, but she could hear the jangle of carriage harness and the blowing and stamping of at least four horses.

"Could it be him?" she asked aloud of the grass and the sea, for no one was about. Straining her ears, she could hear the gardeners, Lyle and Fitch, babbling excitedly to each other as they, she guessed, took charge of the horses. "Could his high and mighty lordship have finally shown fit to arrive and take his rightful place as master? No one ever comes to The Hall anymore. It must be him."

She hoisted her skirts up around her knees and began to run. Skidding to a halt at the crest of the hill overlooking the front drive, she could see a flashy-looking rig-out and four, Lyle and Fitch holding the leaders as they slowly walked the equipage toward the stables. "Well, lop off my legs and dub me stumpy—it
is
him!"

She sank to her haunches to catch her breath and give some thought as to what the arrival of the new Earl would mean to her. Plucking a length of sweet grass, she chewed one end reflectively as she sat and thought, and thought and sat. She had worried about this day even as she had sometimes longed for it to arrive. But, now that it was finally here? Well, it would seem she still didn't know just quite how she felt about the thing.

She sighed once or twice, scratched at an itch on the side of her nose, and finally stood up to slowly walk back toward the sea.

Time and enough for answers come morning, she thought with a shrug of her slim shoulders. She'd share a meal with one of the tenants if she felt hungry later on, which she doubted, and it wouldn't be the first time she'd slept under the stars.

After all, she'd waited six long months for the new Earl to show his face. Now it was his turn to await
her
pleasure.

#

The first thing Kevin Rawlings did upon entering his inherited country domicile was to cast his gaze around the massive entrance hall. The second thing he did was to curl his lip into an aristocratic sneer. "The Hall," he said to no one in particular. "Not Lockport Hall. Nothing pretentious or meant to impress. Not even something romantic and silly. Just, The Hall. No imagination, my esteemed ancestors. None. If the aim had been simplicity, the place would have been better served to be named The Vault. A person could hide a hundred bodies in this curst hellhole without a bit of trouble. And," he added suppressing a shiver, "they'd be well-preserved corpses, what with the complimentary cold storage."

After he had stood unattended for some minutes, he took it upon himself to walk to his left and attack the grand split staircase from that side of the room, heading for the wide upper gallery and the enormous chamber behind it.

He entered the damp, shabby drawing room with no one appearing to gainsay him, stripped off his dusty driving cape, curly brimmed beaver, and gloves, and placed them gingerly on a dusky rose satin chair. At least he hoped it was dusky rose, and not dusty red.

Using his malacca cane to prod and poke at the furnishings, he strolled aimlessly about the large chamber while his mind reached back in time to his last visit to The Hall some three years previously. He had come only because the Earl's doctor swore vehemently that the old man's time had come, but as had been the case on numerous prior occasions, the doctor had once more seriously underestimated Great Uncle Sylvester's tenacious hold on life—or the old man's animosity toward his heir. It had to have been one of the those two that had kept the bastard breathing for so long.

On that hopefully sad occasion, Kevin had arrived with a house party of ten young bucks to bear him company during his deathbed vigil, and they had all proceeded to create such an uproar that the Earl roused himself from his rack of pain to drive the lot of them out of the house at the point of his old campaign sword. "An apoplexy should have taken him off then for certain," Kevin mused aloud, smiling at the memory of his angry great-uncle, red of face and dressed in flowing white gown and nightcap, charging down the stairs waving his tarnished and bent weapon and bellowing obscenities at the top of his lungs.

"But enough of fond reminiscences," he drawled wryly, "before I become utterly maudlin reliving the few moments I've spent under this leaky roof." He crossed the room to give the bell cord several mighty pulls. The last tug proved too much for the aged cloth, bringing its brocaded length down around his shoulders.

With half a hope someone somewhere in the house had heard his call, he proceeded to a window, drew back the shabby velvet drapery with the tip of his cane, and stood looking out over the wreck of the West Park behind The Hall.

As he stood in the light of the dusty sunbeams he looked, even after a long, wearying journey, to be his tailor's best advertisement and his valet's fondest dreams come true. Kevin's tall frame displayed a rare example of perfection in symmetry. By nature a sporting man, he was well muscled, but not so much so that his manly bulges spoiled the neat lines of his jacket, and his broad-shouldered, slim-hipped torso was wondrously complemented by as fine a set of legs as ever graced a pair of silk stockings.

This beauty of form extended to include the fine bone structure of the true aristocrat, including an aquiline nose, well-defined high cheekbones, a firm square chin line, and a broad smooth brow. Arranged inside this exemplary frame were a full mouth, which when smiling allowed long slashing creases to appear in both cheeks, and two arrestingly penetrating blue eyes that deepened almost to navy or withdrew into an icy paleness, depending on his mood. Finely shaped, mobile eyebrows, which etched along the jutting bones of his brow, could register his humor, anger, surprise, ennui, or disdain with equal facility. Indeed, any actor then treading the boards would have gladly given up his best rouge pot for such eyebrows.

Crowning this magnificent example of manhood in flower were locks of the finest guinea gold coin color, locks that had an infuriating proclivity to escape their modish style to curl about his face, giving him an undeserved appearance of boyish innocence.

Such a fine specimen could only be doing his duty to rig himself out in none but the epitome of fashion. Kevin did not shirk this responsibility and this, combined with a natural fastidiousness inborn in the man, made him a person to be envied and aped by all the young dandies as well as sighed over by half (figuring conservatively) the ladies in London.

And so, it was perhaps easy to understand the awe experienced by the housemaid, Olive Zook, when she at last entered the room in answer to the bell summons and first gazed upon this golden god, for the moment basking in sunlight as if a halo surrounded his entire body.

Olive could not speak. She forgot how to curtsy. To blink. To swallow. She could only stand silently and gawk, her mouth agape and her eyes bulging in astonishment.