Yes, Darius would do better to spend his time with the gentlemen.
Yes, he was asking for trouble, following Lady Charlotte out of the drawing room.
But he had to know: What was she up to now?
She led him across the great hall to the library.
The large and comfortably arranged room was obviously in frequent use. Books, covering every subject under the sun, filled the oak shelves lining the walls. In the room’s center stood an orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. Elsewhere Darius saw a pair of globes and a telescope, several more tables of various kinds, and a ladder. All the usual accoutrements, in other words, of the well equipped library.
The rector sat snoring, his head resting upon the back of a sofa near the fireplace. A book lay open on the table in front of him.
“It seems I’m not the only one eager to get away from Mrs. Badger-Me,” Darius whispered.
He received one sidelong glance from the cool blue eyes, too quick for him to read.
“Papa has always encouraged his guests to wander the public rooms as they please,” she said. “He wants them to feel at home.”
She continued across the room to a large table near the south-facing windows. Beyond the windows, the long summer day had ended early under a thickening blanket of clouds. Darius heard rain pattering on the terrace outside.
Inside, pier glasses hung between the darkened windows. In their mirrors danced the flames of the recently lit candelabra standing on the matching pier tables. In the nearest glass he saw, too, the open doorway behind them and servants passing in the hall outside.
Lady Charlotte opened the large portfolio that lay on the table.
Darius did not immediately join her at the table. He bent and looked under it. He walked around and looked behind it. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the windows.
“The plans are here, Mr. Carsington,” she said, tapping a slim finger on the portfolio.
“I’m looking for the trap,” he said, keeping his voice low. “First Mrs. S, then Mrs. B, then Lady L. What next, I wonder? A hinged door that opens up beneath my feet and drops me into a vipers’ pit?”
“I’ve never seen a viper at Lithby Hall,” she said.
“Vipera talka-lot-icus, Vipera henpeck-us-to-death-icus, Vipera-bankrupt-me-remodeling-my-house-icus.”
Her lips quivered. To his disappointment, though, the placid cow expression swiftly settled back into place.
“Here is a drawing of Lithby Hall at the end of the seventeenth century,” she said in the dispassionate tone of a lecturer. “Here it is a century and a half later. This is more or less how my stepmother found it when she first came.”
Darius drew nearer. “Is that a moat?” he said, sliding one of the larger drawings toward him.
She nodded. “It’s less obvious now. Grandfather turned a section into an ornamental lake. An orangery once stood where the kitchens and servants’ hall are. In this one you can see how they closed in the kitchen court. Stepmama added the vestibule, there.” She pointed. “But the greatest changes were inside. This house used to be gloomy and oppressive and cold—or so it seemed to me, as a child. She brought light and warmth.”
He gazed at her, surprised, as he had been earlier, at the way her voice softened when she spoke of how her stepmother had transformed Lithby Hall.
“You are fond of your stepmother,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “I know it is abnormal. I am supposed to hate her.”
“It’s certainly unusual,” he said. “Females can be more viciously territorial than males.”
“Can we, indeed?” She looked at him, and he had the distinct sensation of being assessed or tested in some way. “Have you made a study of women, then, too, Mr. Carsington? I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it. Papa quotes you all the time. I envisioned you as a sage.” She looked away, her brow knit. “I saw you with sparse, white hair and a stoop. And spectacles. People must be shocked the first time they come to hear you lecture.”
Oh, she was good. She’d turned the conversation smoothly from herself to him.
She ought to know how to do it, at her great age!
And he ought to know how to press on, at his age. “I have not yet lectured on familial relationships,” he said. “I have studied them, however.” In self-defense, he could have added. “Your case is most intriguing. You had already emerged from childhood when your father remarried. You had to give way to a woman merely nine years older than yourself. This same woman has borne your father four sons so far, the eldest of whom will inherit the title and property. Yet you seem neither jealous nor resentful.”
“It is like having an older sister,” Lady Charlotte said.
“One might resent or be jealous of a sibling,” he said.
“One might,” she said. “You speak from experience, I daresay, having four older brothers.”
Damnation. She was too good.
“I don’t have to live with them,” he said. “Boys are usually sent away to school. We don’t have to live under the same roof for years on end. Women do. They are usually eager to have homes of their own.”
“This is my home,” she said.
She took some sketches out of a portfolio, clearly wishing to put an end to the subject.
Perhaps he had become too personal. He was not used to conversing with Society maidens—but it was maddening not to know why she was a maiden still.
Though Mrs. Steepleton had talked endlessly, she’d added only one more rumor to those surrounding Lady Charlotte.
This one concerned a mysterious illness in her youth: For a time it was believed that Lady Charlotte would soon follow her mother to the grave. However, after her stepmother took her for an extended stay in the north, then another in the Swiss Alps, she’d recovered from the ailment and made her debut belatedly, at the age of twenty.
The illness, Mrs. Steepleton whispered, was the reason Lord Lithby allowed her more freedom than some people thought proper.
Not much of an explanation. A debut at age twenty still left Lady Charlotte eight Seasons to get a husband.
Darius would find out the answer, eventually. He always found out the answer.
“Not all of the changes Stepmama made are merely aesthetic,” she said. “It was more than decorating. She made important repairs and improvements.”
He drew closer to her and tried to fix his full attention on the sketches.
“New floorboards for certain rooms,” she said. “New airholes cut for ventilation…”
She went on about chimney pots, windows, and tiled floors, about water closets and washstands and calling bells, about painting and plastering and carpentry.
He was soon left in no doubt that bringing Beechwood House into order would cost a king’s ransom. Simply maintaining it at a minimum level would be costly. He couldn’t afford it.
He didn’t want to think about money.
He didn’t want to think about pipes and drawer pulls and stove bottoms.
He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. He’d come too close, and he’d caught her scent. She spoke of ventilation, and he was aware mainly of the light scent of flowers or herbs wafting about her—the soap she used or the herbs stored with her clothes. He bent his head and drank it in.
The soft skin of her neck was inches away from his mouth.
You are three and a half inches from serious trouble, said Logic.
Darius made himself straighten.
What he couldn’t do was keep his mind on house maintenance.
When she talked of stoved feathers—cooked first, she explained, to kill vermin—to fill mattresses, he saw himself lifting her off her feet and tossing her onto a bed.
He saw her grinning wickedly up at him, the same wicked grin she’d worn when she delivered him to Mrs. Steepleton.
She’s playing with you, said Logic. Maiden she may be. Naïve she isn’t.
He firmly banished the pictures from his mind. “It seems a great deal of work,” he said. “I wonder at Lady Lithby’s undertaking it. Though others will do the actual labor at Beechwood, she must supervise and keep track of everything.”
“Not if you hire a competent house steward.” Lady Charlotte tipped her head to one side and studied the sketches with a critical eye. The movement set her eardrops swaying. One lightly touched her cheek. “Your land agent Quested will find the right man for you.”
“He’s finding me a land steward,” said Darius. At two hundred pounds per annum. “I understood that the steward would manage the household as well as the land.”
“That is how Lady Margaret arranged matters,” she said. “And that is how my grandfather did it. But it is an old-fashioned system. Not at all efficient. Ask Papa.”
“Beechwood is not like Lithby Hall,” Darius said. “It is a more modest dwelling, and my needs are far more modest than those of a convivial peer with a large family and an extensive acquaintance.”
She turned her head toward him. Captivated by the teasing eardrop, he’d drawn closer, so very close that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body. Her clean scent was everywhere, it seemed. His mouth was mere inches from hers.
Her gaze lowered to his mouth.
Her breath came a little faster.
He leaned in a little closer.
She turned away. “Colonel Morrell,” she said. “What is your opinion regarding house stewards?”
Darius swore silently, casually eased away from her, and looked in the same direction.
The colonel crossed the threshold and quickly covered the length of the room.
She must have spotted him in the pier glass. But how long had she known he was there?
How long, before she noticed, had Morrell stood in the doorway, watching and listening?
“I should think a butler sufficient for a smaller property, particularly a bachelor’s abode,” he said. “But we soldiers are accustomed to spartan living. I should consider a housekeeper and valet and perhaps a few day servants more than sufficient. However, I am told that this is a disgracefully nipfarthing, cheeseparing way of getting on, not at all in keeping with my consequence.”
He did not say who had told him this, probably because the critic’s husband snored nearby.
Morrell joined them at the table, taking a position on the other side of Lady Charlotte.
“I was ordered to come and look at the pictures and discover ways to make my house grander,” he said. “Is this your work, Lady Charlotte? Your draftsmanship is very good.”
In the process of taking up the picture, he contrived, without being obvious about it, to draw nearer to her.
She edged away from him, which brought her closer to Darius. He ought to move away, too, to give her space. But he knew that Morrell hadn’t closed in merely to be near her. He knew she would back away, and he thought Darius would retreat to give her room. This would push Darius to the very edge of the table. One more such maneuver would force Darius to the other side of the table, where he must view the material sideways.
A territorial move, in short.
One could be amused, and let the fellow have the lady to himself. After all, Darius had no use for her.
However, he had grown up as the youngest of five aggressive males. He never gave up ground without a fight.
He moved not an inch.
Morrell reached out to pick up another sketch, moving nearer still to Lady Charlotte as he did so.
She backed away, and since Darius stood with his hip against the table, this brought her rump against his breeding organs. They instantly took notice of her.
As did she of them, with a sharp intake of breath.
Though his own breathing wasn’t steady, Darius casually reached for another picture. “Ah, the dairy,” he said. “One thing—one of many—I miss in London is fresh country cream and butter. City cream doesn’t taste the same at all.”
“You will need cows, then,” said Lady Charlotte. She set her heel down on his toe.
She put some weight on it, and though he was wearing thin evening shoes rather than boots, it was not enough to make him yield. “I’m a countryman,” he said. “I know where milk and cream come from.”
She shifted her weight onto the one foot. Hers was no great weight, but his toes, unlike his upper body, were not constructed to bear it. He swallowed a gasp…and withdrew.
“I thought you were a London man,” Colonel Morrell said as he perused a plan. “You lecture there often, I believe.”
Careful to keep his toes out of danger, Darius picked up another document. A crayon sketch, which must have been stuck to the bottom of it, fell to the table.
Lady Charlotte reached for the sketch, but Darius got it first.
“I lecture in London,” Darius said. “I learn in the country. In Derbyshire—not very far from here, in fact. My brother Alistair lives in the Peak, near Mat-lock Bath. Who is this sweet creature, Lady Charlotte? I cannot read the inscription.”
In the picture, a woman sat on the doorstep of a cottage, dandling her infant.
Lady Charlotte snatched the picture from him. “It must have fallen on the floor,” she said. “One of the maids must have picked it up when she was cleaning and put it with the others. It doesn’t belong to this lot. It’s one of the villagers with her child. Merely the sort of rustic scene ladies are expected to draw. Well, I will leave you gentlemen to debate the finer points of dairy farming.”
She hurried out of the library.
That was odd, Darius thought.
Morrell must have thought so, too, because his brow knit as he turned and watched Lady Charlotte go. But neither man remarked on it. With stiff courtesy they exchanged opinions about dairies, brew-houses, and bakehouses. They agreed that Lithby Hall’s kitchen court was conveniently situated and arranged. Then Mrs. Badgely came in and woke her husband, after which they all returned to the drawing room.
Darius kept away from Lady Charlotte. He could not believe he’d taken such risks in the library. He was not a boy of fifteen. He knew better. Now of all times he needed to keep a clear head. He was going to prove his father wrong. He was going to revive Beechwood. He was not going to get into trouble with a nobleman’s unwed daughter.
He was already in trouble, and he’d no one to blame but himself. How in blazes was he to finance Lady Lithby’s refurbishing of his house?
He wasn’t. He couldn’t. He had to get out of it somehow.
He was still trying to determine the “somehow” as the party began breaking up. Then, as he was taking his leave of his hosts—and looking forward to a long night of kicking himself—rescue came, all unexpected.
“My lady tells me she means to take charge of your house,” Lord Lithby said. “I advise you to have a care, sir. She looks dainty, but she will run roughshod over you if you let her.”
“I hope I am not as bad as all that!” said Lady Lithby with a laugh. “I only want to make a refuge for Mr. Carsington, as Charlotte said: a comfortable place to come to after his labors.”
“Your and his notions of what is comfortable are not likely to be the same,” said Lord Lithby. “Mr. Carsington is a man of science. I have not received the impression that he wishes, as we do, to entertain multitudes. Certainly he is not interested in following the latest fads and fashions.”
His genial grey gaze returned to Darius. “You must stand up for yourself, sir. Tell my lady plainly what you want.”
Don’t touch my house, Darius wanted to say.
That wasn’t the politic answer, and even he knew better than to utter it.
“I merely wish to make the place habitable for the present,” he said. “At a later time, I shall consider beautifying it.”
“Clean and in order,” said Lord Lithby. “That’s all, Lizzie. Then let the man do his work, which is of somewhat greater importance, as you well know, than the latest fashion in curtains.”
As he spoke, Lady Charlotte joined them. Darius didn’t linger. He took a polite leave of them all and made his escape.
He couldn’t escape her.
She plagued him during the ride back to Altrincham. Along with the first mystery, he had another puzzle to wrestle with: the strange reaction to her drawing of the woman and infant…the odd expression he’d so briefly glimpsed in that beautiful face, an expression he hadn’t expected.
Grief?
And why not? he asked himself impatiently. She had been on the brink of womanhood when she lost her mother. Why should a picture of a mother and child not remind her of the loss, even many years later?
Dogs were known to pine when their master died. Sometimes the pets died of grief. Certain species of birds mourned their mates’ deaths and would not mate again.
Why shouldn’t a woman—of any age—continue to mourn the loss of her mother?
Still…
“Plague take her,” he muttered. “What the devil is it to me?”
Balked lust, obviously.
That neck. That bosom. That round, warm derrière. He could almost feel it still, pressed against his groin.
“Stop it,” he said. “Stop thinking about it. Nothing’s going to come of it. Virgin, remember? Put it—her—out of your mind.”
He couldn’t.
It was maddening. Beautiful and wellborn and rich and seven and twenty and unwed…
It was unnatural was what it was. That sort of thing ought to be against the law.
He turned his mind to the inn and its comfortable bed and the two willing maidservants, either or both of whom might join him in the comfortable bed.
And yet, in the end, he spent the night alone.
Eastham Hall, outskirts of Manchester
Evening of Sunday 16 June
Now that Colonel Morrell had returned from London, he spent his Sundays with his uncle, the Earl of Eastham, at the ancestral pile on the outskirts of Manchester.
He arrived in the morning in time to escort the cantankerous old man to church and did not leave until late in the evening or early on Monday morning.
Colonel Morrell didn’t do this out of affection. He’d always loathed his uncle. Lord Eastham’s only redeeming quality was the misogyny that had kept him from marrying. Thanks to his failure to produce a son, his eldest nephew, the colonel, would inherit an old title, several large properties, and heaps of money.
A year ago, Lord Eastham had decided that his nephew must give up active service abroad for an administrative post at home, in order to concentrate on finding a wife and filling his nursery. Without consulting the nephew, his lordship had used his considerable influence to arrange matters.
Though accustomed to taking orders, the colonel was not accustomed to having his life rearranged at the whim of an irascible civilian. He’d come back to England in a state of mind very close to homicidal. Then, one of the military superiors who’d connived with his uncle took him to a ball in London. There Colonel Morrell met Lady Charlotte Hayward.
This did not make the colonel hate his uncle any the less. It went a good way, however, in reconciling him to dawdling about England, bored witless, instead of doing what he’d been born to do.
Lady Charlotte was not boring. On the contrary, she was fascinating. He’d never seen anything like the way she managed men. He couldn’t stop watching her. How did she do it? Why did she do it? He saw instantly how useful such a wife could be to an ambitious soldier with limited experience of the Beau Monde. Unlike the typical eldest son of a nobleman, Colonel Morrell had not been groomed for the title. But she knew what to do, and she knew everybody. She would smooth his way into the highest reaches of civilian life. She would bring him into the exclusive heart of Fashionable Society.
Naturally, since she was beautiful, he looked forward to bedding her. But he looked forward quite as much to mastering a woman who had so effortlessly mastered so many men.
Since the colonel needed to spend his time near the elusive target, and since her family lived near to his own family’s old place, this brought him closer than he liked to his uncle, who lived not ten miles away from them.
However, the old wretch was a prodigious gossip, and Colonel Morrell was willing to sacrifice Sundays in order to learn everything he possibly could about everyone in Lady Charlotte’s sphere.
At present, the two men sat at dinner.
“The family is back at Lithby Hall, I hear,” Lord Eastham said. “I’d have thought you’d have the banns called by now. I don’t understand this shilly-shallying. You ain’t a bad looking fellow, you know. If she won’t have you, there’s plenty others not so finicky.”
Colonel Morrell was a fine-looking man. He was tall, dark, and well built. Moreover, his magnificent military bearing drew looks of envy from men and looks of admiration from women, even when he wore civilian attire.
His uncle swallowed some wine and frowned. “Better try for a young female, fresh from the schoolroom. Easier to train.”
Colonel Morrell didn’t want an easy-to-train girl. Where was the challenge in that? He wanted someone worth conquering.
He said, “Youthful good looks quickly fade. Intelligence, manners, and personality are of more lasting value, especially in one who will be Lady Eastham one day. I have never seen Lady Charlotte fail in cordiality or courtesy.”
Except for Friday night, he thought.
“She’s amiable to other women, which is rare, as you well know, sir,” he went on. “She’s kind and attentive to the elderly and frail. She’s unfailingly cheerful and gracious. She always knows exactly what to say and do to put others at ease. If she’s ever out of temper, she conceals it so skillfully that it’s impossible to detect.”
And she rejects her many suitors so cleverly and courteously that they go away with no idea she’s done it, he could have added but didn’t. He was quite sure he was the only one who understood what she was up to, and he intended to keep it that way.
He added, “Her temper is so mild and agreeable that I believe you would not at all mind having her under your roof, sir, even for long periods of time.”
If anyone could manage the overbearing old brute, it was Lady Charlotte. She could even manage Mrs. Badgely, who was as provoking as Lord Eastham: no mean feat.
“I need a wife who is sophisticated,” the colonel went on. “A young girl is not likely to be sophisticated, and I should have no notion how to make her so.”
Training Lady Charlotte would be much more interesting and worthwhile. She was accustomed to too much freedom—always dangerous for a woman—and she would not give it up easily. But Colonel Morrell had no worries in that regard. He’d dealt with the army’s spoiled aristocrats as well as the scum who filled the bottom ranks. He could deal with an overindulged young lady, no matter how clever she was. He had no doubt she’d be grateful. She was intelligent enough to appreciate the comfort of being looked after properly, of leaving all the care and worry and decision-making to him.
“If by sophisticated you mean old, I’ll agree,” said his uncle. “Should have been wed ages ago. Something wrong there, but it’s no use telling young men anything.” He drank, frowning. “Speaking of flies in the ointment, I hear Darius Carsington has moved in next door to them. I should watch out for him was I you. Them younger sons of Hargate’s have a knack for marrying fortunes.”
“Do they, indeed?” Colonel Morrell recalled the cozy scene he’d interrupted in the library. The unflappable Lady Charlotte had appeared flustered. That was not a good sign. “I met his two eldest sons during the Season, but I know next to nothing about the others. I daresay you do, sir.”
Of course his uncle knew, and he was happy to tell it and a great deal more. This, after all, was why Colonel Morrell spoiled an otherwise perfectly good Sunday.
His uncle talked, and he listened, noting every tidbit and putting it aside for future use.
On Sunday, after thinking it over, Darius decided to move into Beechwood House. While he could not mark his territory as animals did, he could place his belongings about at strategic points, to help the ladies remember whose house it was and what the rules were.
Lady Lithby wasted no time in setting to work. On Monday she and her stepdaughter arrived bright and early. She promptly sent the London servants back to Lady Hargate—to their obvious joy—and let loose hordes of local men and women, who swarmed over the house like an army of busy ants. They scrubbed, dusted, polished, repaired, and mended. They carried out a fair number of corpses, too, although these were mainly insects.
In spite of Chancery, someone had made sure the house was sealed. Someone must have let a cat patrol it regularly. It was dusty and musty and crumbling in certain places but it had not become home to much wildlife. Or, if it had been their home, the rodents and other small animals had the good sense to flee when Lady Lithby arrived.
While Darius did not flee, he did stay out of the way.
Until late on Friday afternoon.
He was at the home farm with his new land steward, Purchase, when his manservant Goodbody arrived, breathless and in a sweat.
To see the magnificently patient, quiet, all-but-invisible valet venture beyond the safety of the once formal gardens was amazing enough. That he’d obviously run most of the way was shocking.
“What’s happened?” Darius said. “Is the house afire? Or did the laundress put too much starch in my neckcloths?”
“Sir,” Goodbody gasped. “Your books.”
Darius felt a chill.
He had brought with him from London only the books he would need to consult immediately. He’d stored them in his bedroom, from which he’d banned everybody but Goodbody.
This was because Darius did not trust Lady Charlotte any farther than he could throw her. He could easily imagine a hundred torments she could inflict upon him, especially with the bulldog’s help.
Daisy seemed to be a well-trained and good-natured canine. Still, bulldogs, especially young ones, could be busy animals. With no rats to catch, she would find something to chew.
Had she sneaked—or been let—into his bedroom?
“What about the books?” he said very calmly.
“Several crates of them were delivered this morning,” said Goodbody. “I was not informed, sir, or I should have told you the instant they arrived. As it was, I only discovered it but a short time ago when I happened to pass the library. I saw that the crates had been opened, and Lady Charlotte was putting the books away.” He paused. “It was not my place to say anything to the lady, sir, but I was not sure whether you had informed her of your system.”
Darius had brought with him fewer than two dozen volumes. They had fit in one trunk.
“Crates of books,” he said, as a cold foreboding swept over him.
“Yes, sir. Judging by the number of them, it appears that your collection has arrived,” said Good body. “All of it.”
Darius’s collection comprised several hundred volumes. Many were rare, some irreplaceable.
“But I never sent for them,” he said. “I am sure I—Devil take it!” His mother. This was her doing.
Against his wishes, she had sent servants to ready Beechwood House. Those unwanted servants had returned to London early in the week. From them or her numerous correspondents she must have learned that Lady Lithby had taken charge of Beechwood House’s refurbishment.
Mother had simply decided to send his books after him.
Without consulting him.
As usual.
From the day he was born, practically, he’d had to assert himself—forcefully—or be pushed into the shadows or crushed by the formidable personalities about him. If he wasn’t on the spot to stand up to her, his mother would decide what was best for him.
Now his precious books were in the hands of a woman who had apparently decided that his life was lacking in trials and tribulations, and was determined to correct the deficiency.
He mounted his horse and galloped back to the house.