When a Girl Loves an Earl (Rescued from Ruin Book 5) (3 page)

After learning from Hargrave how much of his role as Lord Tannenbrook involved not only governance of his lands but influencing the laws and policies of the entire kingdom, James had realized how poorly prepared a Scottish stonemason was to take a seat in the House of Lords. Fortunately, Gregory and Lucien had been eager to help. They had taken him under their tutelage, sharing their knowledge of proper manners and dress, sharing their tutors and dance instructor and tailor. They had even helped him chip away at his brogue until he could scarcely recognize his own voice.

All the while, through the summer and autumn and long, cold winter, he’d assured himself that he would visit Netherdunnie again. In another month, when the harvest was completed. In a fortnight, when Shankwood’s annual well-dressing festival was over. In the spring, when the ice had receded and the roof repairs were done. Each week, he had written letters upon letters—to Mam, to McFadden, even to Nellie.

And, above all, to Alison. His bonnie lass. Lucien was right. He had dreamed of her. Remembered her smell and her eyes and her voice as he lay in the master bedchamber of Shankwood Hall. But after the first month, she had ceased responding to his letters. He’d written to ask Mam about it, to which she had replied, “Focus on your duties there, my son. After a time, you shall return, and you may ask her reasons yourself.”

He’d pressed several times more, but she had only advised him to forget the lass, emphasizing that his “preoccupation can come to no good.” Nellie was equally unhelpful, but that was hardly a surprise. His sister had never taken to Alison, often implying the “dairyman’s daughter” was loose with her favors and did not love him as she pretended.

Now, however, he would finally see her again, hear her rasping voice and smell her milky skin. He would propose marriage—her father was certain to agree, given the title he could offer—and they would be wed before returning to Shankwood.

If
she was not too angry with him for staying away so long. Perhaps that was why she’d not answered his letters. Again, he drummed his knuckle against the window frame.

Gregory glanced up from his book to interrupt James’s thoughts. “That will not hurry the horses, James,” he said quietly.

James sighed. “The coach is too bloody slow. We would have arrived yesterday had we simply taken our mounts.”

“Yesterday, indeed,” commented Lucien, wryly nodding toward the downpour beyond the window. “Had we not drowned first.”

With his usual calm, Gregory closed the book and set it beside him on the seat. “You are both so young.”

“You are only three years ahead of me, oh aged one,” said Lucien.

Gregory grinned. “A long three years, in your case.” His eyes moved back to James. “Regardless, I know this much: Little good has ever resulted from rushing things. Your impatience is unusual. This girl must mean a great deal to you.”

James met his older friend’s eyes solemnly. “She does.”

Gregory nodded as though he understood.

Lucien snorted. “Pure and utter madness to let a female twist you up in such a way.”

It was an agonizingly long twenty minutes before the coach arrived at his family’s cottage. He had the door open before it stopped. Slammed his boots down into the mud. Rushed through the gate and watched as the red door opened to reveal his mam, dressed all in brown, apart from a white cap, wearing a broad, teary smile.

“Son,” she breathed, though he read the word on her lips more than heard it above the rain.

Within a few paces, he had wrapped her up, lifted her off the ground, spun her in a circle. This time, he heard her whisper it. “Jamie. My son.”

After a time, the tightness in his chest eased, and he was able to speak. “How I missed ye, Mam.”

She welcomed them all inside with fresh ale and much news—McFadden had begun training a new apprentice. Patrick Abernathy had accompanied Nellie to the fair in Coldstream; matters between them were “growin’ a mite more earnest,” according to Mam’s estimation.

James’s knuckles were drumming the edge of the kitchen table when his patience broke. “What of Alison, Mam?”

She stopped in the midst of a word, her mouth open in an O. Soft, serious eyes turned dark and grave.

He did not like it.

Her hand covered his.

He liked that even less. “Is she at her father’s farm?”

“Nae, Jamie.”

He ground his teeth. “Tell me.”

“Ye willnae like it, son.” She squeezed his hand as though bracing him. “A month or sae after ye left, she married the oldest Campbell lad. Douglas. They live wi’ his mother now at the Campbell farm.”

He scarcely heard a word beyond “married.” She was married. His bonnie lass. To another man.

“It’s sorry I am tae be tellin’ ye this now, Jamie. But had I said somethin’ sooner, ye would hae left England before ye had finished yer work. An’ fer what? The deed was done.”

He did not remember rising from the table, nor stalking out of the cottage, slamming the red door, and striding back through the rain to the coach. He scarcely recalled barking directions to the Atherbourne coachman and climbing inside.

It was less than a mile to the farm, but for the entire journey, he could only hear his final entreaty to her: “Wait fer me, lass. I shall return.” She had not answered. She had not waited. She had chosen to become a farmer’s wife rather than his.

He wanted to be sick, his stomach churning, his head floating and fogged.

Within minutes, he was rattling Campbell’s door with his fist, noting the green moss upon the wet stones of the old farmhouse. If Douglas Campbell could not bother with cleaning the stones around his door, how could he care for a wife? Answer: He could not. Surely she would have realized that James was a far better choice for husband. Why, then, would she—

The door opened, first a crack, then wide. And there she stood. Alison.

He breathed, the motion of air into his lungs painful. She was thinner than before, her hair coiled at the back of her head, her gown covered by an apron.

“Jamie?” Her voice was the same, currently soft with wonderment. “I—I didna expect tae see ye … here.” Warm brown eyes scoured him from head to toe.

His cravat and silk waistcoat choked the air out of him.

She stepped back, opening the door wider to a dim interior. “Come in frae the rain. I’ll fetch us some ale.”

Automatically, he removed his hat, shaking the rainwater from the brim before stepping inside. He’d visited the Campbell farm a handful of times—he and Douglas had played in front of the hearth in this room as boys.

Alison brushed one hand along the side of her head and another along her hip. “No’ sae fine as what ye’re accustomed tae, I’ve nae doubt.”

“Alison,” he said, the word dragged from the dark, burning stew inside his gut. “Why?”

In her eyes, first lowered and then raised to his, he saw resignation and sadness. “I didna belong wi’ ye, Jamie. I belong here, on a farm. This wis always my place. Ye need a wife who will no’ embarrass ye wi’ her rough ways.”

“Blethers. Ye had only tae wait.”

“I couldna wait.”

“Why?”

She swallowed. Her arms fell loose at her sides as though she knew not what to do with them. “There was a bairn, Jamie.”

He hadn’t imagined anything could hurt more than learning of her betrayal, but this was … agony. Like being blasted through with molten metal then crushed beneath a two-ton slab of granite. The room shook in his vision. Perhaps it was his head.

“Wh—whose?”

Her lips pressed together. “Yers.”

“Where? Where is—”

“Gone. I am sorry, Jamie.” She covered her mouth with her hand and squeezed her eyes shut briefly before explaining what had happened. After he had left, she’d missed her monthly courses and, fearing she carried his child, had persuaded Douglas to wed her, pretending the child was Campbell’s. “A laddie,” she rasped. “I named him John, fer yer faither.”

“Where is he?” he growled.

“In the last weeks of carryin’, a fever burned through Netherdunnie. It took hold of me. When he came, he was weak. Too weak.” A tear tracked down her cheek. “He died no’ three days after he was born.”

The granite slab was grinding his bones. Grinding him to dust.

“Where is my son?” He cared nothing for the gritted roar of his demand. She had hidden this from him. He would have returned to Netherdunnie. He would have come back and married her, had she only written to tell him the truth. He would have cared for her properly, made her a countess, for Christ’s sake. Taken her away from here. Then, his son—his
son
—would have lived.

“We buried him on the brae, beneath the largest willow. There is a marker there. McFadden’s work. I—I planted daisies.”

He left without saying goodbye. Left her there, tears upon her cheeks, clinging to the frame of the open door. But that did not matter. He could barely see through the rain, but he remembered the hill, several hundred yards from the farmhouse, topped by a small copse of willow and birch. By the time he reached the tiny gravemarker, he was soaked and cold, the linen of his shirt and cravat a sodden skin leaching all heat from his blood.

McFadden had done well, chiseling gray granite into an elaborate cross. Etching the name of his son—his
son
—into the hard stone.

John. After Jamie’s father.

Jamie’s knees were in the mud, now. His hand clutched the cross until he feared it might crack. It did not, of course. Granite was dense and tough by nature. It resisted. Endured.

No, it was not the stone that fractured beneath the dripping willow and his great, muckle fist. Instead, it was he that cracked, cleaving forever in two.

*~*~*

CHAPTER TWO

“Your error lies not in your admiration, Miss Darling, but in failing to properly disguise it. Obviousness is appalling strategy. A man may partake of that which is served to him upon a silken pillow, but only a daft one marries it.”
—The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to Miss Penelope Darling upon being regaled with extravagant praise for Lord Mochrie’s questionable wit.

March 14, 1818

Bowman’s on Bond Street

“He lifted the gentleman … by his cravat?” Viola Darling blinked slowly up at her dearest friend, Charlotte Lancaster, who stood beside her in Mrs. Bowman’s lovely, blue-draped shop. The difference in their heights could be felt in the accustomed crook of Viola’s nape. She was reminded again that she should not stand so near Charlotte, for she always came away from their conversations nursing a vague pain in her upper spine. However, considering they were presently perusing the same fashion plate—and Viola was not about to wait for an answer—there was little choice in the matter.

“Mmm. With one hand, he dangled Mr. Maynard ten inches above the floor,” Charlotte murmured, absently tracing a gloved finger down the lines of the azure velvet riding habit. “Quite a shocking display of strength, really.”

Viola blinked again, redirecting her gaze to the sketch and suppressing a relishing shiver. They were discussing an incident that had occurred the previous November, when Charlotte had visited London with her aunt and uncle. After taking a mortifying tumble on the ice in Hyde Park, Charlotte had been dubbed Longshanks Lancaster by a handful of spiteful, wretched, thoroughly disgraceful young men. Later, at a rout hosted by Lady Rutherford for the smattering of beau monde in town during winter, a valiant champion had overheard Mr. Maynard taunting Charlotte and had promptly come to her defense.

Admittedly, Viola had developed a rather sudden and alarming fascination with the story. And with its hero, a mysterious earl whom she’d not occasioned to meet—yet. She intended to rectify the oversight soon, for such
nobility
among the nobility was far more rare than it should be.

Swallowing, Viola said as casually as she could manage, “One hand. How … brutish of him.” And impressive. “What did he do next?”

A single red brow arched. “He forced the lout to apologize and promptly tossed him onto the refreshment table. Broke the thing in half.”

Viola’s shivers worsened until she feared she was losing her breath. In fact, she had no reply. Such physical power, particularly in the midst of a London ballroom, was simply outlandish. Preposterous. Fascinating.

“Do you suppose I should take this in emerald?” Charlotte murmured. “It will be costly.”

Viola cleared her throat and focused on the sketch. Perhaps a distraction was wise for the moment. Her belly was fizzing as though she’d imbibed an entire bottle of champagne. “You are an heiress, Charlotte. Your father could buy you a thousand such habits.”

A smile lifted Charlotte’s lips, still pale from their jaunt along Bond Street on this chill morning. “If only I could justify such an expense. Surely I could sell nine-hundred and ninety-nine of them and purchase passage to Boston.”

Although Charlotte had spent most of her life in England—even her diction was indistinguishable from any other Mayfair miss—she was half-American by parentage and entirely American by sentiment. Charlotte’s fondest wish was to return to the land of her birth and enter trade. Charlotte’s father, on the other hand, wished to marry his daughter to an English title. The result was five London seasons during which Charlotte had received not a single offer.

Frankly, Viola did not begin to understand what the gentlemen of the ton were thinking. They flocked around her but paid no mind at all to Charlotte, who was one of the loveliest women she had ever encountered—honest and kind and sensible and good-natured. Granted, she was absurdly tall and dotted with freckles. And vermillion was not a particularly fashionable color for a lady’s hair. And Charlotte had an unfortunate tendency to trod men’s toes or dislodge their hats or elbow their noses. But these were meaningless trifles. One need only glance into her friend’s intelligent eyes when they lit with knowing humor to be utterly charmed.

“Why did he not propose marriage to you?” Viola asked, curious about the intriguing gentleman they’d been discussing.

Green-and-gold eyes flared. “My father?”

Viola giggled. “Silly goose. Your gallant. Lord Tannenbrook.”

“Oh! Er, doubtless Papa would be pleased by an offer from an earl.” Charlotte waved a hand dismissively, nearly batting Viola’s nose. “However, James and I are not … that is, Lord Tannenbrook does not view me in such a way. He is simply the sort of man who would defend a woman’s honor.”

“A woman with whom he was not previously acquainted and in whom he had no prior interest?” Was her voice growing tart? It was. How strange.

Charlotte shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so. But it was hardly due to a sudden affection. He is honorable, Viola. A genuinely good man. He heard Mr. Maynard’s vile taunt and took it as his duty to—”

“Break the refreshment table in half with Mr. Maynard’s backside.” Now she sounded sharp to her own ears. Viola found herself frowning. She never frowned. What was wrong with her?

Charlotte sighed and rolled her eyes. “I hear your implication, you know, and it is not true. Lord Tannenbrook and I are merely friends who have enjoyed a correspondence. There is more romantic sentiment between me and this riding habit.” She waved at the fashion plate.

Forcing her brow smooth, Viola sniffed, uncertain if she should believe her. Surely any woman who had been defended so heroically could not help falling in love with her rescuer, if only a little. Viola had never met Lord Tannenbrook, but based on Charlotte’s description, she found the protestations of mere friendship dubious, particularly with Mr. Lancaster pressing Charlotte to marry.

However, Viola had no desire to argue with her dearest friend over romantic sentiments that may or may not exist. “Well, it is a most fetching design,” she conceded, glancing again at the sketch. “If you must have it, take it in blue. Green is lovely but predictable.”

Smiling, Charlotte nodded. “Your instincts are beyond compare.”

“I know.”

Charlotte’s sigh was long-suffering. “Not this again.”

“Do not question the Inkling. It has never led me astray.”

“Never?”

“It guided me to this magnificent bonnet.” Viola waggled her fingers at the elegant confection currently perched upon her head. Covered in midnight silk, the hat was adorned with silver rosettes and tiny white feathers for leaves. She had discovered it one day whilst accompanying Charlotte to a shabby Oxford Street pawnshop. The bonnet had been covered in dust, but her eye had been drawn as though the item glimmered diamond-bright. Charlotte had scoffed at Viola’s impulsive purchase—until it was cleaned and restored to its present glorious state.

Viola continued, “The Inkling helped my father choose our town house, which has since become one of the most fashionable addresses in Mayfair.”

“Coincidence.”

“And, let us not forget, this instinct at which you scoff insisted that I befriend you.”

“That was not the Inkling. That was my perpetual clumsiness meeting your generous nature. We get on splendidly, you and I.”

Their friendship had begun the previous season when Charlotte’s elbow collided with Viola’s ear during a quadrille. Charlotte had muttered a flushed apology. Viola had laughed and linked arms with the tall redhead, spinning them both around in the center of the floor merrily, causing everyone around them to cheer and laugh along. Charlotte’s flush had faded, her grin had grown, and they had charmed each other silly. It was one of Viola’s favorite memories.

“Of course we get on, Charlotte.” Vexing. That was the word for Charlotte’s persistent skepticism.
Vexing.
Viola smiled wide to disguise her irritation and enunciated clearly so as to be understood. “Since I was a child, whenever I have followed the Inkling, it has rewarded me immeasurably. Whenever I have ignored it, I have languished in regret. These are
facts.”

Charlotte gave her a considering glance before softening. “I am sorry, Vi. Insulting you was not my intention.”

Viola waved away her apology and laughed away the sting. “Think no more of it. Do you suppose I should purchase a new ball gown? If Penelope is to be believed, Lady Gattingford’s fete will be larger than ever this year.”

Charlotte glanced toward the curtained area at the back of the shop. “Mrs. Bowman would certainly approve.”

Viola sighed. “Alas, Papa would not. He insists my current assortment of gowns is sufficient.”

Lowering her voice to a whisper, Charlotte leaned in close. “Even with the discount I negotiated for you?”

Nodding, Viola gave her a small smile.

“Perhaps if Mrs. Bowman created something for me, and purely by chance, we found it was fitted much too short—”

Viola covered her friend’s hand and squeezed. “Whatever we Darlings lack in wealth is more than compensated by our pride, dearest.”

A dark-haired, elegant woman swept aside the blue curtain with a dramatic wave of her arm and glided toward them, trailing behind her a string of mixed English and Italian commands intended for her two young assistants, who scurried meekly in the modiste’s wake. “Ah, Miss Darling,” Mrs. Bowman cried in her musically accented version of the English language. “You require another ball dress, no?”

Viola beamed a broad smile at the Italian woman—one of the most gifted mantua-makers in the city—and met her halfway across the floor of the shop to squeeze her hands fondly. “I would purchase one of your splendid confections every day of the season if my father would permit it, Mrs. Bowman. Your talent is unmatched.”

Her reply was a sniff and a lift of her lips. “This is true.” The woman turned to snap at her assistants, “The new fashion plates for ball gowns. Fetch them for Miss Darling.”

Tilting her head in regret, Viola protested quietly, “Alas, Papa insists I must practice restraint, though it pains me greatly. The indigo silk your husband displayed last week has me dreaming in magnificent shades of blue.”

Renata Bowman’s English husband was a textile merchant who occasionally featured offerings in Bowman’s shop. It was another reason Viola and her friends frequented the place—it spared them a stop at the draper’s. Similarly, the milliner several doors down from Bowman’s had entered into an agreement with the modiste to display selected bonnets and turbans inside the shop, serving as inspiration to ladies seeking a complete ensemble. Both partnerships had been Charlotte’s suggestions, and the measures had put the dressmaker in high demand, indeed.

“Besides,” Viola continued, grinning up into the woman’s shrewd, dark eyes. “So many ladies clamor for your designs, it would be months before you could possibly complete another order, would it not?”

“Non essere sciocca.
For you, Miss Darling, always there is time.”

Viola thought she heard one of Mrs. Bowman’s assistants squawk in protest. The dressmaker fired a rapid blast of Italian at the poor girl before striding away, snapping her fingers impatiently.

Charlotte came to stand beside Viola. “Unfortunately for her assistants, I believe she means that. A good deal of credit for Mrs. Bowman’s success may be placed at your feet, Vi.”

“Mine? How do you mean?”

“Come now. You have worn her creations exclusively both last season and this. Every young lady in Mayfair now scurries to Mrs. Bowman’s door seeking a mere drop of your sorcery.” With a wry quirk of her lips, Charlotte angled a glance toward the corner where Mrs. Bowman stood thumbing impatiently through pages of fashion plates, thrusting this one and that into the trembling hands of her harried assistant. “If I am correct, I may be able to increase your discount. Perhaps even negotiate an arrangement involving no funds at all, merely a recommendation of her services to a few more of your acquaintances.”

The calculating glint in Charlotte’s eye was a familiar sight. It appeared often during Charlotte’s visits to the pawnbroker, where she sold her possessions to accrue her “nest egg.” Viola occasionally accompanied her on such outings. They had been educational.

“You believe you can persuade her to create my gowns
gratis?”
Viola laughed lightly. “I fear you overestimate my influence.”

Green-gold eyes flared in disbelieving silence, searching her face as though bewildered. “Vi, your beauty is … otherworldly. No diamond of the first water has ever shone brighter. You realize this, do you not?”

As always when anyone commented upon her appearance, a prickle of discomfort itched beneath Viola’s skin. “Silly goose. I am as human as anyone. Have you heard me play the harp? Dreadful noise.”

“Musical talent is not why gentlemen behave like hounds scenting a beefsteak whenever you enter a room.”

Viola wrinkled her nose and smoothed the white embroidered cambric of her skirt. “Fools, all. Why do you suppose I have not accepted any of them? With scarcely more than a single glance, they declare their deathless affection.”

“Precisely. They are enchanted. Bewitched.”