With This Ring (3 page)

But not her.

That moment in the inn-yard, standing in the rain gazing up at the princess in the tower …

Restless at the memory, impatient with himself for dwelling upon it, Aaron threw himself down upon his straw pile in an uneasy sprawl.
It was always thus, was it not?
A fellow thought he was on the right road, doing the proper thing, minding his own matters—only to encounter one of
them
.

Her presence had struck him like an arrow.
He’d known instantly by the arch of her long neck, by the insubstantial touch of her fingers against the glass, by the haughty tilt of her head, that she was no chambermaid.

Ah, the English lady, the most refined and delicate creature in the world—and the most dangerous.

She had marked him as well, he reckoned, though he knew not as what.
He’d stood there, like an idiot, practically daring her to look at him, to find him out, to tell the world that the most evil of blackguards, Lord Aaron Arbogast, was back in England—everyone, bring out your stones!

It only proved his point.
Women like that one made a fellow lose his mind, lose his soul, lose his honor.
If Miss Amelia Masterson had only had a little honor of her own—

No.
He could not blame Amy.
She had been a silly, overwrought sort of girl, prone to melodrama and fantasy, but she had been an innocent in need of safeguarding.
Whatever Amy had done, whatever anyone involved had done, Aaron himself had most certainly failed to perform his gentlemanly duty in protecting her.

Who carried the most blame for the tragic end of Miss Amy Masterson was not at issue any longer.
The fates had chosen him for that role.
Nonetheless, he would someday become the Earl of Arbodean and inherit the estate.
He needed to convince the old earl that he, Aaron, had changed.
He was no longer the careless spoiled boy who had been driven from his home by scandal and public outrage.
He had become a responsible, dutiful man—one well accomplished in land management, one who would be a good master to Arbodean.

If
he inherited the wealth needed to keep his home from falling into ruin.
He needed to remain on course, to stick to the straight and narrow, as he had for the past ten years.
If only he could, his grandfather might just come to believe, if not in Aaron’s honor, at least in his stability as an able lord.

The twist of guilt and loss in his belly made Aaron writhe on his lumpy bed of straw.
Sometimes he thought he only cared about securing the accounts, which were not entailed to him as the estate was.
Other times, the memory of his grandfather’s shocked and revolted gaze burned through him like lava.

Then, as always, he would hear Hugh’s pleading voice.
“
You’re the heir to the Earl of Arbodean. He’ll never turn against you. But I have no one, no one but you.
”

“You!
Driver!”

Aaron lifted his head just in time to catch a face full of rough wool.
He yanked it down to see the groom’s boy grinning at him from across the loft.
A sharp word nearly made it to his lips before he realized that the young man was sharing one of his own blankets with him.
Gravely, he nodded deeply in gratitude.
“My thanks, lad.”

“Too right, your thanks.”
The freckled young man snorted.
“Airs and graces.
Driving gents about is makin’ you into a right lady.”

Aaron found himself snorting a small laugh, his spirit warmed by the boy’s easy generosity.
Brooding would get him nowhere.
In the end, he still walked the earth and he knew himself to now be a good man, though he was resigned to the fact that the world might never agree.

So he rolled himself up in the horsy-smelling blanket and let himself sink deep into the golden, summery hay.
He had never slept better in his life.

*   *   *

In the morning, just after cock’s crow, Aaron freshened himself at the horse trough alongside the stable-boys, scrubbing his face with the cold, green-tinged water pumped from deep underground.

Yet another activity he could not imagine his young, arrogant self performing.

The hour was too early for the guests at the inn, so he joined the boisterous lads as they breakfasted on bread and cheese, washed down by watered beer.
He enjoyed their cheerfully rough company.
When they sent him off, laughing, to tend to his “toff,” he left them with a smile on his face and headed indoors to visit his servant.

Hastings was ensconced in lordly comfort in the best room in the inn, the one, Aaron had been informed, with the freshly stuffed mattress and the window overlooking the meadow instead of the muddy cobbles of the inn-yard.
“Ye can’t even smell the stable from that’un!”
the innkeeper had stated proudly.

Aaron took this information without grinding his jaw at the time he had spent picking straw from his hair that morning.
He felt quite proud of himself.
Hastings’s room was toasty warm and filled with solid furnishings and draped in protective maidservants.
It took some time for Aaron to free his man from all the feminine pulchritude hovering tenderly over “his lordship.”

Finally, they were alone.
Aaron pulled a chair up to Hastings’s bedside.
The man lay very still, clad in Aaron’s last decent nightshirt and worn but still-fine velvet dressing gown, his covers tucked about him as neatly as a crust surrounding a meat pie.
A lordship pie.
His face was pale as parchment but for the twin spots of fever glowing on his cheeks.

Aaron poked him in the chest with one fingertip.
“You can open your eyes now.”

Hastings let out a gust of held breath and cracked open two reddened eyes.
“Blimey, them girls is meddlesome!”

Aaron found himself unsympathetic.
“Have you figured out the game yet?”

“Aye.”
Hastings snorted damply.
“Though I’m ashamed to say it weren’t till the tenth time one of ’em ‘lordshipped’ me.
Me head’s a sodden cork!”

Aaron smiled.
He knew his stalwart companion wouldn’t slip, even in the flights of feverishness.
“You’re going to be fine.
All you need is a bit of rest.
But…” Aaron tilted his head.
“You know I have to go on without you.”

“But you haven’t—” Hastings began to raise himself onto his elbows, then dissolved into a fit of coughing.
Aaron handed him a mug of water to sip and then eased him back down onto the pillows.
“Ye—ye can’t go yet,” Hastings managed to croak.
“I’ll be on me feet in no ti—” The cough commenced once more.

Aaron shook his head.
“You can’t finish this journey right now.
You can scarcely finish a sentence!
It’s not even another day’s drive to Arbodean, unless the roads give out entirely under all this mud.
I’ll be there and back before you know it.”

Hastings glared at him, obviously dying to say a great more on the subject.
However, although Aaron allowed the man many liberties, Hastings knew who was master and who was servant.
Hastings might have saved Aaron from certain death, but Aaron had saved Hastings from a life behind bars.
Just ask Hastings which end was worse.

Frowning down at the top button of his nightshirt, Hastings shrugged.
“Figured you’d scrape me off one day,” he mumbled.
“Heartless toff.”

Aaron gave him a mild blow on the shoulder and a rueful smile.
“Worthless piker.”
He stood.
“Enjoy your stay, ‘Lord Aaron.’
I’ll be back soon to pay the landlord—I hope.
Keep the dodge going as long as you can, at any rate.
Get well.”

“Go on then.”
Hastings nodded.
“I’ll be right glad to stay out of that cursed damp weather!”

“I shall think of you when the cold rain runs down my neck.”
Aaron absently reached for the folded news-sheet on the breakfast tray.

Hastings’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Oy, I be readin’ that!”

Startled, Aaron blinked and let the paper drop to the bedcovers.
“You can read?”

Hastings snarled and obviously would have liked to deliver some blistering retort, but his customary insubordination deteriorated into coughing before he could respond further.
The relapse brought his nurses bustling back into the room.
Aaron stood back and let them tend his friend.
Seeing that Hastings was in good hands, Aaron turned to leave, but stopped at Hastings’s hoarse call.

“You there!”
Hastings commanded in passably posh tones.
“You must go ahead of me and tell the Earl of Arbodean not to fret!
I be—I shall be along soon enough!”

Aaron turned and bowed exaggeratedly, tugging at his forelock.
“Aye, me lord.
Ye will be done.”
He even managed to make it fully out the door before he snickered.

As he left “his lordship’s” room, Aaron felt the pull of urgency drawing him north once more.
Hastings might very well take a fortnight or more to recover—a stay that Aaron most certainly could not afford.
He couldn’t even pay for the simple bread and cheese he had been fed as his lordship’s servant!
His only recourse was to leave Hastings behind and allow him to run up the account while Aaron continued on to Derbyshire.
There, he was in hopes that his bright new relationship with the old earl would extend to covering the bill.

Now Aaron must set out under cover of bad weather in his lordship’s empty carriage, hoping to make it to Arbodean before he ran out of stolen grain for his horses.

Lost in thought, Aaron was only vaguely aware of another person in the hall.
A womanly figure wafted toward him.
The English lady whom he’d allowed himself to be distracted by.
He suppressed a sudden urge to see her face clearly, forcing his eyes down.
Recalling his “place,” he ducked aside as she passed, so that his dirty boots would not brush her hem in the narrow hall, and in that motion brought the brim of his hat down over his face as well.

Her politely distant “good morning” wafted pleasantly on his ear.
Although females, particularly the dreaded subspecies of “ladies,” were on his list of dangerous creatures best avoided, he had to admit that he’d missed the cool crisp accents of an educated Englishwoman.
He was home again.

Almost.

The last ten years of his life had been spent in a different place, a balmy palm-studded chain of islands redolent with sensual and carnal delights—and he’d not sampled a single one in his quest to improve his character and gain back everything he’d so carelessly thrown away.

His sense of smell, however, he’d secretly indulged to the fullest.
Now, oddly, he found himself recalling those exotic aromas.
He realized that the lady’s scent lingered in the hall, bringing to mind nights of dark warmth and sweet, juicy fruits that left sugar on his lips.

Jasmine.

How … unexpected.
Not rose or lavender or even tart lemon verbena, but jasmine—a wickedly sweet and tempting bloom, as white as snow, as tender and moist to the touch as the petals of a woman’s center.

Despite himself, he turned his head, but the lady had gone into one of the other rooms and had shut the door on a mud-spattered servant without another thought—as well she should.

He ought to be going himself.
It wasn’t going to be easy travel for the carriage down these sodden country roads.
He’d originally bought the conveyance to make a good impression.
The alternative was to ride a second-rate horse up to the gates of Arbodean.
Aaron flinched at the thought.
It was bad enough that he had to wear his third-best suit, since his gold-trimmed finery still lay soaking in the inn’s laundry and his second-best he’d carefully set aside to greet his grandfather on the morrow, hopefully not covered in the region’s ubiquitous clay mud.

No, he needed the carriage to further his good impression.
He would find another driver somewhere between the Green Donkey and the estate of Arbodean.
A driver who wasn’t much interested in immediate payment.
Who could fit into Hastings’s livery.
And who could, of course, drive.
Actually, Aaron was willing to overlook any lack on that last requirement, if only he could find someone to fulfill the other two!

*   *   *

Elektra entered “her” private dining room and crossed to where her tea tray awaited her.
With the inn’s maids twittering about his lordship’s door like brown feathered pullets, she was surprised she’d had any service from them at all!

Despite the distraction of the staff, her tea was brewed most properly and accompanied by two dainty iced cakes.
The pot was still warm, and she poured herself a cupful gratefully.
Her brilliant plan to catch his lordship’s eye had been completely dismantled by the fact that he had yet to leave his room.

You caught his servant’s eye easily enough.

Elektra firmly put the rugged driver from her mind.
She had no business thinking about anything—or anyone!—but her goal.
She would find a way to introduce herself to Lord Aaron somehow.

In the interim, she’d had to satisfy herself with a fact-seeking visit to the innkeeper’s wife, which by chance had given her opportunity to peruse the woman’s surprisingly comprehensive collection of recent gossip sheets, although they were riddled with clipped holes, as if a flock of moths had been at them … with scissors.

Now, with some reliably exaggerated information at hand, Elektra set about a bit of research.

Curling into her chosen throne by the fire, she spread her cadged collection out before her.
Lord Orwell’s ball had been held last evening.
This morning’s gossip rags would not yet have made it as far as the Green Donkey.
She wondered if anyone she knew had been mentioned for dressing well.

If it were not for her “wonderful” cousin, Miss Bliss Worthington, Elektra would have been there herself.
Securing a brilliant match was the task at hand, and being seen was the first step toward that goal.

Privately, she thought the night had likely been an overheated bore.
The ballroom would have been badly lit and more than one young lady would have sacrificed a dearly bought hem to the young gentlemen’s overeager, overstepping, overlarge shoes.

However, any opportunity to catch the eye of just the right sort of not-too-old, not-too-hideous, not-too-stupid set of title and estates—and yes, the fellow himself—was not to be missed.
She might be pretty enough and her connections might be good, but there were only a handful of such prizes on the market and there were many dozens of young ladies vying for those few.