A Reluctant Courtship Page 4

  “But did not Lady Whittaker—your sister, that is—say your father had chosen a husband for you and you were more than willing after . . . everything that went wrong last year?”

  “Yes, but . . .” Honore deflated like one of Cassandra’s balloons robbed of hydrogen. She propped her chin in her hand and shifted her gaze to the jars and boxes upon her dressing table. “I did agree to marry Papa’s choice for me when I thought it would be a suitable match.”

  “You know most would consider an alliance with even an American-raised Lord Ashmoor a suitable match. Far better than . . . well, better than your previous suitors.”

  “You mean the one who was a traitor or the one who was a murderer?”

  Miss Morrow laughed. “Either. You could do far worse.”

  “What, a cit?”

  “Remain single for the sake of your pride.” Miss Morrow’s voice held such sorrow Honore jerked her head up and stared at the older lady.

  “Did you do that?”

  Miss Morrow shrugged. “It was long ago when I was young and above myself.”

  “Are you saying I am being above myself to think Lord Ashmoor is not good enough for me?”

  Miss Morrow did not answer.

  Honore glared at her reflection for several moments, then inclined her head in surrender to the truth. “I am here instead of in London with my brother because I have blotted my copybook beyond recognition.”

  “It’s not quite that bad, my dear child, but you may not attract the best of the crop of eligible young men for another year or two, and then you will be climbing the age ladder toward being on the shelf. A pity for such a pretty and charming girl.”

  “With unwise choices in her past.” Honore massaged her suddenly aching temples. “All right, yes, had Papa presented Lord Ashmoor to me last December instead of—of dying on us, I likely would have gone along with the plan. But it does not matter. His lordship returned these papers to me because he has no wish for an alliance.”

  “No, he does not.”

  “Miss Morrow, what are you saying?” Honore spun on the stool to face her companion head-on.

  She smiled. “You have such a competent steward here that I doubt the estate will take up much of your time.”

  “I will see that it does. I must do something useful.” Honore’s voice dropped to a tone just above a whisper. “I have to do something Papa and the rest of the family would have approved of.”

  “Lord Bainbridge, cousin Whittaker told me, only wanted his daughters to wed well. And the rest of your family loves you as you are.”

  “Humph.” Honore shook her head. “They banished me here when none of them could take the time for me.”

  Miss Morrow smoothed Honore’s hair over her shoulder. “No, my dear, they wanted what is best for you right now.”

  “And I shall die of boredom unless I can do something with the estate.”

  “Unless you catch yourself a husband.” Miss Morrow smiled, making her only passably pretty face lovely. “The sort of husband your father thought you should have.”

  “You mean a Yankee traitor?” Honore curled her upper lip.

  “No, child, an earl with twenty thousand a year.”

  4

  After Miss Bainbridge had slipped along the orchard wall and vanished into the house, Meric plucked an apple from one of the trees and bit down on the glossy red fruit. The juice ran sweet and tangy across his tongue, refreshing after his ordeal, but probably an offense that would get him transported if anyone caught him stealing the Bainbridge harvest.

  He took another large bite in an effort to dispel the image of Miss Bainbridge dangling off the cliff, clinging to the spindly sapling. His mouth went dry. Not even the juice from the rest of the apple removed the tinny taste of fear from his mouth. She was such a little thing, nicely rounded, and fortunately, quite a pocket Venus even bedraggled and dirty. Had she been much larger, he doubted he could have lifted her off that cliff. For weeks, no doubt, he would have nightmares about losing his hold on her, and her going over to break upon the rocks like a discarded wooden doll.

  He shuddered, tossed the core of the apple atop a mound of windfalls, and disturbed a swarm of wasps dining on the fallen fruit. They rose into the air in a menacing cloud.

  Meric ran, ducking under laden branches, climbing over a low wall separating apples from peaches, and ended up scaling the seawall to elude the angry insects. Most of them anyway. Two managed to sting him through the thin linen of his shirt.

  “You’d think I’d know better.” He leaned against the wall and rubbed the one wound he could reach on the back of his right arm. “It’s not as though we didn’t have wasps dining on fallen fruit in New York.”

  Sometimes, by the middle of the harsh winters prevalent in the upper end of New York, the fallen fruit, wild berries, and grapes they had hunted all summer and dried were all they had to eat, especially in the years since Father had gone through the ice while fishing on Lake Champlain. But not last winter. Last winter, his title and inheritance firmly under his control, Meric had managed, through a series of smugglers and privateers, to send a small fortune home. Doing so had brought him under the scrutiny of the excise men or horse guards, or some such organization of Britain’s military might. They had waylaid him twice upon his travels between a Poole estate and London and questioned his activities on specific nights without giving him any information at all.

  “You were seen talking to a fisherman who is a known smuggler,” they had said on the second occasion, all but accusing him outright.

  “Then arrest him, if he’s known to be a smuggler,” Meric had responded.

  One of the officers had dropped his hand to a horse pistol at his waist, convincing Meric he would soon find himself back in a prison. But his companion had caught hold of his friend’s arm, muttered something like, “That is all, my lord,” and dragged the first officer away.

  “The privilege of a title,” Meric murmured. “And falling under suspicion again was worth it.” He smiled in satisfaction.

  A tearstained letter from Mother had found its way back to him. Because of the war and fear of attack, they had moved back to Albany. His middle brother was working, the two younger were still in school, and his eldest sister was able to get married.

  Ensuring the continued comfort of his family back in America, ridiculous war or not, was why he found himself without a coat and with his shirt shredded to rags as he retraced his path back to Clovelly, to the twelve-room house he called a mansion and the English called a cottage. He had needed to settle the marriage agreement with Miss Honore Bainbridge.

  Settle it so she knew he wouldn’t marry her.

  Nine months of contemplation on the issue assured him that he was not acting dishonorably. He hadn’t signed the papers. No announcements had been made. Apparently Lord Bainbridge hadn’t so much as told his daughter of his plans, let alone how far they had gone. The way he had secured the settlement papers upon Lord Bainbridge’s demise kept even rumors of an alliance out of the mouths of the gossipmongers.

  He had acted wisely. With the cloud of suspicion still hanging over his head, he needed a wife above the kind of rumors and even facts surrounding Miss Honore Bainbridge. One beau a traitor and the other a murderer did not fine spousal material make, not with what people thought of his own father still rife in the county.

  But he couldn’t avoid her. They would attend the same church. They would attend the same social gatherings. In just three days’ time, he would attend some sort of musical evening at the home of a local squire and his wife, and if Miss Bainbridge’s name was not already added to the guest list—for the sake of her family’s social standing, if not hers—then Meric had learned nothing in the past year regarding the socially ambitious. The Devenishes’ eldest son was of marriageable age for a girl barely out of the schoolroom like Miss Bainbridge. And their second eldest daughter was old enough to make her debut into Society the following spring.

  “She is not an h
eiress, my lord,” his steward, Chilcott, had informed him, “but she is of a quiet, good nature, is better than passably pretty, and will bring some kind of dowry to the union. Not that you need concern yourself with that, if you will forgive me for being so vulgar.”

  “If I can’t discuss money with my steward, who can I discuss it with?”

  A pained look on the steward’s fine-drawn features had Meric racing back through his words to figure out how he had offended the man. “Who can I . . .” he murmured.

  “With whom, my lord.” Chilcott removed his spectacles and rubbed them on his sleeve.

  Meric laughed. “Thank you for keeping me on the grammatical straight and narrow.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Chilcott had bowed, his body as stiff as his voice, and withdrawn behind his ledgers. He didn’t withdraw so far that his little smile went unnoticed.

  Chilcott was once a schoolmaster. With four younger brothers, Meric didn’t need to ask why the man had chosen to be an estate steward and secretary to the late Lord Ashmoor instead.

  As though his thoughts of the steward and the Poole offspring conjured them from the earth, two figures in the distance began racing toward Meric, one tall and slightly built, the other as big as Meric. The latter waved his arms and hollered something unintelligible until he drew within a dozen yards.

  “We thought you went over the cliff, you addlepate, and I was afraid I’d have to be an English earl.” Philemon Poole, aged four and twenty, flung a brawny arm around his eldest brother’s shoulders. “I expect a spare is good, but I don’t like the role.”

  “It’s worse for you than being a spare, lad.” Meric punched his brother’s shoulder. “You are now the heir until I beget my own.”

  “Then get married and do so soon. I want to go home.”

  “One can’t rush these matters. But what brings you all after me?” Meric glanced at Chilcott.

  “Some news, my lord.” Chilcott drew his coat collar up around his ears. “But we are in for rain soon, and with you in such a state of undress, we should get you home.”

  “Agreed,” Meric said. “But tell me your news while we walk.”

  “It can wait, my lord,” Chilcott said.

  “Not if you felt the need to chase after me.” Meric glanced from steward to brother. Both avoided his eyes.

  “Looks like you have something more important to tell us,” Philo said. “You look like you lost a boxing match.”

  “A boxing match with a bit of granite.” Meric glanced back. The coastline had curved enough so he couldn’t see the scarred bits of the cliff where a brave and beautiful young lady had clung for life. “The true hand of God manifested in my life today. But if your news brought you out here . . .”

  “We needed to know where you were.” Philo shot a glance at Chilcott, who nodded.

  “We still do, my lord,” the steward added. “I can explain why afterward.”

  “If you like.”

  Meric didn’t like. Something in the exchanged glances, even more their very presence in chasing after him, gave him the same sickening jolt to his middle that seeing Miss Bainbridge hanging off the cliff had done. Since both of the other men remained stubbornly silent, Meric gave in. As they hastened along the cliffs, racing the rain clouds blowing in from the Bristol Channel, he told his brother and his steward about the incident on the cliff. Neither of the other men spoke. A burst of raindrops sent them dashing for the “cottage” perched at the top of the village that tumbled down the cliff side to the sea.

  “You really should start riding, my lord,” Chilcott admonished Meric. “This walking through the rain is beneath your touch.”

  “I like to walk, and riding . . .”

  Meric wouldn’t admit that he hadn’t ridden a horse until a year ago. Handled a team of six horses pulling a wagon, yes. Ridden a high-stepping English horse, never—until Lord Bainbridge insisted he learn. He had. He could manage without embarrassing himself unless someone required him to jump fences, but he preferred the propulsion of his own two feet to trusting in four hooves.

  “I wanted the walk along the cliffs,” Meric did admit.

  “But if you went to call on Miss Bainbridge,” Philo pointed out, “you need to arrive by the road.”

  Meric frowned at his brother. “Is Chilcott civilizing you?”

  “I hope not. I’m going back to America as soon as this war is over or you have an heir.”

  “Miss Bainbridge,” Chilcott said, “was not at home, according to her companion.”

  Meric took the steps to his house in one bound and banged the brass knocker like a guest, as he still believed he was. Then he turned back to his comrades. “You called at Bainbridge?”

  “We wanted to ask for their boat to hunt for your broken body.” Philo grinned, but tightness around his Poole hazel eyes betrayed the strain he’d suffered in fearing his eldest brother had gone down with a chunk of cliff.

  Meric started to respond. The opening door stopped him. Even more, the lugubrious face of his butler, who had been dragged practically kicking and screaming from Ashmoor, stopped him.

  “The maid just mopped the entryway, my lord,” Wooland announced as though informing his master that the young woman had just died.

  “And we will get it muddy.” Meric gave the butler a thoughtful glance. “We shall remove our shoes here on the stoop.”

  “No, no, my lord. That is unnecessary, I am sure.” Chilcott sounded appalled.

  Wooland pursed his lips, and Philo laughed aloud.

  Meric simply held up one foot. “Perhaps you will do the honors and pull off my boot, Wooland?”

  Wooland backed away. “No, my lord. No. I will have the girl return to mop up after you.”

  Still laughing, trailing muddy footprints behind him, Philo led the way into the library, where a fire always burned on wet days. Meric started to follow, but Chilcott held up a staying hand.

  “Perhaps you should change, my lord. You cannot afford to catch a chill.”

  Meric started to point out that he had never caught a chill in his life after getting wet, read the genuine concern on the steward’s face, and nodded. A chill had carried off Chilcott’s uncle a mere week after his two sons had died while salmon fishing in Scotland. Gross misfortune likely plagued the gentle-natured steward.

  “Send my brother up to do the same, if you will, and don’t forget yourself. I want to hear what was so important that you came out to find me.” Meric took the steps to his room two at a time.

  He had hired a valet at Lord Bainbridge’s insistence. Huntley stood barely more than five feet tall and possibly weighed less than Miss Bainbridge. His hair, eyes, and skin held no color, merely reflected shades of white, gray, and grayer from his perpetual white cravats and black coats. But those coats and cravats fit him to such perfection that Meric hired him to put refinement on the “Yankee Earl,” the epithet with which the newspapers had christened the new Lord Ashmoor. He had learned a great deal about proper garb from the valet, who spoke in a deep, decisive voice.

  “Your coat, my lord, what has happened to your beautiful coat?”

  “No longer beautiful, I’m afraid. And it’s a long story for which I haven’t the time or patience at the moment. Chilcott and Philo are holding something back, and I want to hurry down and make them talk.” Meric gave his valet a narrow-eyed glare. “Unless you can enlighten me?”

  “I would not presume to do so, my lord.”

  “Ha, you presume to do a great deal, man.”

  Huntley began to remove garments from the dressing room clothespress. “Mr. Philo told me not to tell.”

  “And if I tell you that you should tell me, who do you—” An image of Chilcott’s disapproval flashed into Meric’s mind, and he cleared his throat. “To whom do you listen?”

  “You, my lord, unless I use my discretion.”

  “At risk of dismissal?”

  Huntley merely produced an impeccable pile of what passed for comfortable clothes in England. T
heir perfection of tailoring and ironing was his answer—who else was capable of and willing to guide his lordship through the murky waters of male sartorial excellence? Perhaps a few gentlemen’s gentlemen in London, but no one in the wilds of the West Country.

  Meric sighed over the knowledge that his servants seemed to manage him more than he managed them, and changed into the dry clothing. As Huntley folded the breeches over his arm, something fell out of the pocket and rang on the stone edge of the hearth. He stooped to pick it up.

  Meric waved him off. “Just a button I found in a pasture today.”

  “A broken one, I see.”

  “Yes, but it has an interesting embossing on it, and I wanted to study it further.” Meric tucked the button into his pocket.

  Huntley wrinkled his high-bridged nose. “Embossed buttons are too dandified for you, my lord. I am afraid I could not dress a gentleman who wore that much fancywork on his buttons.”

  Meric gritted his teeth. He needed to start giving a few orders instead of hearing ultimatums. If only he knew how to order servants. The past year hadn’t really taught him, apparently.

  A refrain sounded in his head: You need a wife to run your life.

  Miss Honore Bainbridge’s face, lovely even dirty and tearstained—presenting the sort of delicate sculptured bones that would make her beautiful at any age—floated before his mind’s eye. Such beauty and courage shouldn’t be connected with a morally suspect character.

  “The Lord will provide for you,” Mother had assured him before he and Philo sailed for England by way of France, then a Channel Island, and then a smuggler’s vessel. “See how He is providing for us?”

  She was right, of course—the Lord had provided for him and then some. But Miss Bainbridge as marriage material was not amidst the provisions of the Lord. The Lord would provide another female, maybe already had.

  Heart rather heavy, Meric descended to the library, a fire, and blessed coffee rather than the eternal tea. Not that his parents hadn’t wanted tea now and again. Coffee simply proved more common and easier to obtain.

  He poured himself a cup of the strong, dark brew, eschewed the cream Chilcott offered him, and propped a shoulder against the mantel. “So tell me what was so important you had to follow me into the country.”