Somerset, England, 1793
If not for that one time, that evening of insanity following a week of madness, Eleanor Hardwick would hold an unblemished record for common sense. Luckily no one knew the full extent of her folly. No one except him.
The memory of the two weeks that followed still caused her stomach to drop. The waiting, the fear, until the onset of the dull throb that signaled her liberation from the possible consequences of her indiscretion. Many a foolish female must have felt the same way. But while most were relieved not to be with child because they faced nothing but unwed disgrace, Eleanor was happy because it saved her from the necessity of matrimony. She had fetched her women’s cloths, packed half a dozen unopened letters into a neat parcel, and sent the missives back to their sender with a brief, stinging request to contact her no more.
Eleanor believed in common sense with a fervor that bordered on the dogmatic. She did not believe in marriage, a conclusion arrived at through the dispassionate observation of her many friends and relations. Who could possibly admire an institution that allowed a malodorous toad like Sir George Ashdown to impregnate her cousin Sylvia six times in seven years? Or bound together a pair with as little in common as her own parents?
When, at the age of twenty-one, she gained control of an income of five hundred pounds a year from her late mother, she resolved to spend her life in an entirely rational fashion. And if reason led her to lavish a large proportion of that income on personal adornment, who was to argue with her? No husband would ever carp at her milliner’s bills.
For almost a decade she had divided her time between her father’s house and traveling for prolonged visits to those of her relations, their spouses, and offspring. Thus she gained all the enjoyment of domesticity without its undesirable permanent effects. Though not without her share of suitors, she had discouraged them all without regret.
Except one.
The sole occasion she allowed her heart to override her reason had not been a success. In fact, she rarely allowed herself to remember it, except on those occasions when she awoke in a state of melancholy, clutching her midriff. She ascribed this foolishness to overindulgence in cheese.
As a result of her rapport with the younger generation, she was much in demand when impetuous youth fell into undesirable company, or in love with unsuitable men. On the whole she found erring children easier to deal with than their frantic parents, confirming her conclusion that marriage did strange things to the adult mind.
In the case of her father’s second cousin, the Honorable Mrs. George Brotherton, it was two marriages. But Eleanor doubted matrimony was responsible for her condition. Such a combination of malice and stupidity must surely be innate. And her two husbands, discovering that the only escape from marriage was death, had chosen that drastic course. Only a certain physical likeness convinced Eleanor that young Caro Brotherton wasn’t a changeling. How a chilly beauty like Elizabeth Brotherton had managed to conceive such a delightful creature was beyond understanding.
“I despair of Caroline,” Mrs. Brotherton said over teacups, the day after Eleanor arrived in Somerset in response to an urgent summons. “Look at her! She is a disgrace.”
Eleanor looked. Caro’s red curls were a little untidy, and down around her shoulders. Perfectly acceptable for a seventeen-year-old who wasn’t yet out. One foot bounced against the leg of her chair, but her hands were busy with an embroidery hoop.
“What are you making, Caro?” Eleanor asked, hoping to draw attention to this ladylike pursuit.
“A pair of slippers for Uncle Camber.”
Eleanor had stepped in a wasps’ nest. Though Mrs. Brotherton had always loved a lord, the Earl of Camber loathed his widowed sister-in-law and never invited her to his estate when Caro made her annual visit. If not for her own fondness for the child, Eleanor would never seek out Elizabeth’s company either.
“I shouldn’t let you go to Camber,” Mrs. Brotherton said with a sniff. “He’s a bad influence.”
“I thought he was virtually bedridden,” Eleanor said, to forestall the furious response on the tip of Caro’s tongue.
“Poor Uncle Camber,” Caro said, obviously struggling for serenity. “His feet get cold.” Then, after an uneasy silence, “Lucy Markham is going to Bath in September to stay with her aunt. She says I can go with her. You must let me go, Mama.”
Caro had never learned how to approach her mother with tact. “Certainly not!” was the predictable reply. “You will wait until next season when you will make your debut under my eye.”
“It’s so unfair! You don’t want me to have any fun.”
“Cousin,” Eleanor said, leaping into her role as peacemaker. “I need some fresh air. If you aren’t too tired, Caro, I’d enjoy your company.”
Caro accepted the escape and the aspersion on her vigor with all the energy of her years. “Yes please, dearest Eleanor! You’re such a nice, fast walker!”
“Fetch your bonnet!” Eleanor spoke too late. Caro had already bolted the room.
“I’m so glad you are here,” Caro said, once they had escaped the dreary atmosphere of Sedgehill Manor into the lane. “At least with you I may call on our neighbors. Mama doesn’t think any of them are good enough for her. I wish my papa had not been the brother of an earl.”
“Cousin Elizabeth does tend to be just the slightest bit high in the instep.” An outrageous understatement about a woman who would probably address Queen Charlotte herself with condescension. She was well aware that Elizabeth tolerated her only because Eleanor’s father, although a country parson, was nephew to a viscount.
“It’s so unfair!” The eternal complaint of youth and one that in this case Eleanor found justified.
“I have an idea,” she said. “I’m going to London for a month in the autumn. Shall I ask your mother if you can accompany me?”
“Darling, darling Eleanor.” Caro positively bounced with glee. “That would be wonderful.” Then her face fell. “Mama will never say yes.”
“I will try to persuade her. As you may have guessed, she invited me here because she thinks I’m a sensible influence. Let’s prove her right. You must be very good.”
“I hate being good! And it won’t work. Nothing I do is ever enough for her. She won’t let me go. She wants to force me to marry a horrid old man.”
“Surely not.”
“She does, I tell you. She’s picked out a marquess.”
“How old is this man?”
“At least thirty!” Caro cried tragically.
“At death’s door!” replied Eleanor, who had herself reached that dread age at her last birthday. “Perhaps, if you are very lucky, you’ll meet a suitable gentleman who is a year or two younger.”
“Don’t tease, Eleanor. I will marry only when I fall in love, and I could never fall in love with such a dull creature.”
In Eleanor’s experience, girls got such ideas from only one source. “Have you been reading novels? I’m surprised Cousin Elizabeth allows it.”
“She doesn’t. Mama wants me to read only improving books. I borrow them from Lucy. I just finished The Battlements of Adelmante. Orlando, the most delicious and dashing man, saves Loriana from being drowned in the moat by a ghost.”
“Drowned by a ghost? Fancy that! I must read this remarkable book.”
“And then they fall desperately in love,” she said, peeping sideways at Eleanor, “but their love is doomed because Loriana’s cruel guardian wishes her to marry a wicked count!” She gave a blissful sigh, though that was a feeble word to describe an expression that seemed to possess every inch of her slight, muslin-clad body. “I can’t wait to fall in love. Have you ever been in love, Eleanor?”
“Never.” Eleanor wasn’t really lying. She’d only thought she was in love for a few days. Once she discovered the truth about Max Quinton, any tender sentiment had vanished from her breast, evaporated into air as though it never existed. Such an insubstantial emotion could not possibly have been true love. “Love is not for me,” she said. “I’m far too sensible.”
Caro accepted the denial with an incredulous shrug. At seventeen, she wasn’t much interested in the affairs of others, especially those as ancient as Eleanor. “I shall never marry without love, not even if Mama locks me in the dungeon.”
“Does Sedgehill Manor have a dungeon? Quite unusual for a house not more than fifty years old.”
“You know what I mean. You are so lucky not to have a mother telling you what to do.”
“As to that, my dear, I do miss my mine, who died when I was even younger than you are.” Because Eleanor believed in encouraging good conduct, even under the most trying of circumstances, she added, “And you would miss yours.”
Caro seized her hand. “I’m sorry, Eleanor. I shouldn’t have said that about your mama.”
“It’s all right. And you are right. I am fortunate to have my own funds and a father so wrapped in his studies he lets me do as I wish. But only,” she continued, seeing a moment for a lesson while she had Caro’s volatile attention, “because I am sensible and he knows I won’t get into trouble.”
“You’ve never done anything foolish in all these years?”
“Never.” Unless one counted losing one’s virtue to a rogue.
“I don’t know how you manage it.”
Eleanor tried to keep from smiling and to instill some common sense into the girl, with advice on the management of implacable parents. She couldn’t flatter herself Caro paid much attention. About a mile from the house, they turned off the lane, climbing a stile into a water meadow. The lazy river glimmered invitingly in the sun, a fisherman forming a picturesque vista on the opposite bank.
Caro ran to the water’s edge and stared. Since her straw bonnet had long since slipped off and trailed down her back, she raised a hand to her brow to ward off the high sun. Eleanor, generally averse to hyperbole, had to admit the angler resembled a young Apollo: slender and lithe, with golden hair ruffled by the breeze. Most improperly dressed, with nothing but an open-necked shirt above his breeches, he flung aside his fishing rod and favored Caro with a dazzling smile.
“Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? Oh why,” he quoted Francis Quarles, stretching out his arms in a manner worth of Drury Lane.
“Does that eclipsing hand so long deny
The sunshine of thy soul-enliv’ning eye?”
Caro’s literary borrowings hadn’t included much poetry. “Did you just make that up?” she called across a dozen feet of water.
“You would inspire me to original verse, except your beauty has addled my senses.”
Eleanor surged forward. This kind of nonsense would turn a young girl’s head and bring down the wrath of Cousin Elizabeth. “Caro, remember your manners. You are not acquainted with this gentleman.”
For a gentleman he was. That, at least, Eleanor could tell from his voice and demeanor. She tried to recall if she’d met the owners of this land on previous visits to Somerset. Townley or Townsend was their name.
“Allow me to introduce myself and make my bow to you ladies.”
“You’re on the wrong side of the river!” Caro objected.
“Easily remedied,” he said, and slid down into the water, boots and all.
Caro let out a peal of laughter and stepped nearer to the bank. Being Caro, she tumbled in. The golden youth waded into the center of the stream, where the water was waist high, and gathered her into his arms. With some difficulty—carrying a wet, full-grown girl would be hard for a far larger man—he staggered to the bank, where the pair of them gazed into each other’s eyes for a long moment.
“Caro!” Eleanor called. The idiot boy had borne her back to his side of the river. “What a foolish thing to do. You’re wet through.”
Caro ignored her. “You saved my life!” she said dramatically.
“I would circle the earth three times to do so again and fight a thousand Mamluks for the privilege of bearing such a precious burden.”
Seeing that the precious burden was testing his strength, and he was in danger of dropping her back in the river, Eleanor coughed loudly. The besotted pair looked up in surprise. “I think you should put her down, sir.”
With surprising agility, he let the precious burden to the ground. Wet, clinging muslin revealed every contour of Caro’s enviable figure, a sight that her savior regarded with appreciation. Hair and water streamed over her shoulders as her bonnet floated downstream.
“Caro!” Eleanor’s cry was ignored. The pair had recommenced their mutual gazing. She eyed the water, but had no intention of getting wet and ruining her blue cambric gown. “Hey! Young sir! Is there a bridge close by?”
No answer. The youth was holding Caro’s hand. If Eleanor didn’t intervene soon he’d be kissing her and she didn’t trust the girl to resist the liberty. Quite the opposite. A little downstream, beyond a curve, she glimpsed a crossing. A few planks of wood hardly merited the title of bridge, but it would do.
Max Quinton took his angling seriously. That’s why he’d elected to occupy a spot a couple of hundred yards away from Robert, who tended to lose concentration. While Max found his ward’s aesthetical theories and literary jests entertaining enough, they scared away the fish. When he heard talking, splashing, and shrieking upstream, he had a trout on the line, a stubborn one that required all his skill and enough agility to make him glad the warmth of the day had made him discard his riding coat. The curve of the stream and a thicket obstructed his view. Deciding Robert could handle any crisis—the river was neither fast nor deep enough to easily drown in–he continued to play his fish. Intent on what was happening underwater, at first he barely registered a woman striding by on the opposite bank. It took a moment or two for his consciousness to note a resemblance to her. To Eleanor.
Every so often he’d catch a glimpse of a tall, trim figure in a crowd and his heart would leap. But it never was her. The world, it sometimes seemed, was full of well-dressed brunettes. He hadn’t set eyes on Eleanor Hardwick in almost five years. In a crowded street or an assembly, it wasn’t unreasonable to anticipate an encounter. Any such expectation in a Somerset meadow, many miles from either of their homes, was irrational. Still, as always, he had to be sure. Blue cloth flashed among the branches of a willow. His inattention allowed the line to slacken; his trout broke away from the hook. It had been a large one.
One that got away. Just like Eleanor.
The woman, who was not, of course, Eleanor, passed out of sight. Forgetting his state of undress, Max wedged his rod into a bush, headed downstream and rounded the thicket that concealed the simple bridge. The woman set foot on the narrow boards of the crossing. His lungs emptied.
Her grace was the first thing he’d noticed about her at the Petworth assembly, a human equivalent of the thoroughbred horses he bred. No, not human. She was a goddess come to earth. High breasts, a trim waist, and curved hips. And long shapely legs. Even though covered by a gown, he’d known, the minute he set eyes on her, that her legs would be something special. And then there was her face. She would never be called pretty. There was too much strength in her features, the proud brow and nose, the cool, amused gaze that surveyed the world about her and found it full of fools that required her tolerance.
He hadn’t forgotten a single moment of his brief acquaintance with Eleanor Hardwick, and for five years, not a day had passed when he failed to regret its loss. While he acknowledged his own wrongdoing in his courtship and seduction, the end had been her decision. Anger had fought regret and sometimes prevailed. He’d wondered about his reaction when they met again. Now he knew.
“Eleanor!” She looked up. He stepped forward to meet her on the bridge. “Eleanor!” He should ask her how she was, why she was there. But he didn’t care why she was there. All he wanted to do was take her into his arms and tease her stern mouth into returning his kisses.
His outstretched arms were welcomed with a hearty shove and he landed on his back in cold water.
“What—”
She looked down at him, grim satisfaction on her elegant features. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Quinton, but you were in my way. I have things to attend to.”
As he struggled upright in the thigh-deep water, she completed her crossing. Cold soaked through every garment, chilling his skin, his ardor, and his heart. “Wait! You are trespassing,” he called, a surge of rage making him petty. He’d been wrong, yes, but his intentions had ultimately been honorable. She had sent him about his business with a cold rebuke. And returned all his letters unread.
“Oh? Is this your land?” she said, arching a haughty brow, knowing well that his home was over a hundred miles away, near Newmarket.
“Effectively, yes,” he said, clambering up the bank. “I have control of the Townsend estate for another three weeks, until my ward reaches his majority.”
“In that case,” she replied, “I’ll collect my charge and be off.”
Ignoring the squelching in his boots, he reached for her again. In the bare second his wet hand rested on her lower arm, warm under his chilled fingers, longing flooded his veins. “Eleanor,” he whispered.
“Get your wet hands off my gown.” She shook him off.
“Won’t you forgive me?”
Her gray eyes held his. He’d seen them bright with affection and wild with ecstasy. Now they contained polished steel.
“I think, Mr. Quinton, it would be better if we both forget that there is anything to forgive.”
Max deliberately mistook her meaning. “Good,” he said. She watched with the outrage of a dowager as he unbuttoned his clammy, clinging waistcoat. Yet she’d seen him wearing even less. Or felt him, rather. It had been dark at the time.
The garment slid down his arms. “I’m ready to apologize again, but I’d like it even better if we could begin a new chapter. May we start again? Please Eleanor.”
Eleanor watched Max Quinton drape his wet waistcoat over a branch, in fascinated disbelief that, meeting him after five years, he should be stripping off his clothes. She trusted he wouldn’t be removing all of them. The entreaty in his voice affected her, but only for an instant. Giving him a dunking had blunted the edge of anger that his appearance provoked, that was all. Nothing else had changed.
“I made it clear in the past,” she said, “that our acquaintance was over. Forever. Should we meet again, which I trust won’t be necessary, you may call me Miss Hardwick.”
“Don’t you think that’s absurd, given what we once were to each other?”
She stepped farther away from this unpleasantly damp man. Never mind that his figure was displayed to advantage beneath clinging linen, fine enough to limn the contours of his chest and reveal an intriguing dark shadow descending to the waist. It was true that his thick, wavy hair looked quite good wet, but she no longer responded to the lilt of laughter in his deep voice. “Our past relationship was founded on falsehood and meant nothing. I never think of you and I’d like to keep it that way. We meet as indifferent strangers.”
A smile tugged on his lips. It was one of the first things she’d noticed about him, that hint of humor in an otherwise grave face. “Do you often push strangers into rivers?”
“You deserved it.”
“I’ll own up to my transgressions and again humbly beg for your forgiveness. I have never held you in anything but the greatest esteem.” He sounded reasonable and earnest. The sincerity in his voice plucked at her heart.
She’d be a fool, again, to believe him. “I was nothing but a game to you, a conquest to impress your friends.”
“You were my love, the woman I wanted to marry.”
She answered in precise, clipped syllables. “You wanted to marry me because you had no choice. I appreciated the honor you did me with your forced proposal, but declined to tie myself for life to such a man, for such a reason.”
She would have stalked off, but he stayed her with a hand on her elbow. “You insult me, Eleanor, and you are wrong,” he said. “It’s true that I owed you marriage but I didn’t offer for you solely because I had to. You were not compromised, not publicly, as is proven by the fact that your reputation is intact.”
Again she shook him off. “No thanks to you! I was the subject of a drunken wager. Do you deny it?”
“I cannot, to my shame, though it was not I who made the bet. It was Ashdown. I wanted no part of it until I set eyes on you.”
Far from placated, she spun around to confront him. “Am I supposed to be flattered by that?” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at him. “Is it acceptable that you took part in a contest for my favors because you discovered that I wasn’t quite the dried-up spinster Sir George Ashdown had claimed?”
“That is not how it was.” His voice had lost its soothing tone and she was glad of it. It was only fair that he should be as agitated as she.
“But you took the money. You won the competition and collected your winnings. Will you deny it?”
“You are willfully misunderstanding me. I’d have kissed you even if there wasn’t a penny in it for me.”
Kiss! He’d done a great deal more than kiss! “I really don’t care,” she said with her nose in the air. “I was overcome by the proximity of a charming rogue on a summer night, not the first foolish woman to make such a mistake and doubtless not the last. Luckily no lasting harm was done.”
Voices intruded, Robert’s and a young female’s. Max looked around as they came into view. From the state of their garments, it appeared both had suffered the same fate as he. The three of them were dripping wet, while Eleanor stood immaculate and dry, her clothing as unruffled as her heart. She could very well be the officious harridan who had been described to him before he set eyes on her.
It had been at a dinner hosted by the Earl of Egremont for the officers of the Sussex militia.
“You want to hear about pestilential females?” The question came from Sir George Ashdown, one of the local gentry summoned to Petworth Park for this all-male occasion. “There’s no woman who’s more of a nuisance than my wife’s cousin Eleanor.”
There were some embarrassed protests from the officers. The topic of conversation had been women and the traps they set for unwitting men. Women, not ladies. It really wasn’t proper for a group of gentlemen, who’d left the dinner table to take the air, to discuss ladies.
“Damn it, Ashdown.” The speaker was the major of the regiment who had invited Max down to Sussex for the weeklong race meeting. “I wouldn’t discuss any cousin of mine when my cock’s pissing in the wind.” The earl’s claret had been good and plentiful and the major’s words were slurred.
So were Ashdown’s. “Button it up then. Complain all you want about your birds of paradise, but at least you can be rid of them. There’s no disposing of a wife.”
“You’re talking about Lady Ashdown?” Another officer was confused as well as disapproving.
“Lady Ashdown never gave me any trouble until Eleanor Hardwick came to stay with us. Now it’s nothing but nagging, all day long. No muddy boots in the house, no wet dogs in the drawing room, and she won’t let me bed her when I’m drunk.” Sir George arranged his breeches. “The haughty bitch Eleanor put her up to it.”
Max did not regard himself a fastidious man. He bred horses and spent much of his life in the stables. But he was inclined to be on the side of Ashdown’s wife in this matter. Though no judge of male allure, he had the feeling that if he was Lady Ashdown, he’d try to avoid bedding Sir George, who possessed a large belly and an unpleasant odor, at every opportunity.
“You know what?” Ashdown continued, aggrieved. “She asked me to bathe more often. I bathe! Once a month. Just like my father. Always have, always will.”
Some of the officers, the married men among them, made sympathetic noises and a couple of them mentioned interfering female relations.
“Interfering is right. She has no business telling my wife what to do. She’s a cold-hearted bitch and could never get a man of her own. Who would want her? Needs to be put in her place.”
A despicable man, Ashdown, still was. He had been flat wrong about Eleanor. But that crude complaint of Sir George’s had eventually led to the destruction of Max’s hopes.
An insistent female voice brought him back to Somerset, where he had improbably encountered his lost love.
“Eleanor!” cried the girl. “This is Robert Townsend, our neighbor. Imagine! We met when we were little children but he hasn’t lived here in years. Now he has returned for his twenty-first birthday, and his guardian is to celebrate it with a grand ball!”
Eleanor’s presence was explained. She must be visiting relations in the neighborhood. She had a great many relations.
“Robert,” he said. “I see you’ve managed to get into trouble, as usual. I believe introductions are in order. I am already acquainted with Miss Hardwick.”
Robert knew how to behave when he wanted to. Despite his wet clothes he produced a bow and his most winning smile. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”
Eleanor curtsied. “You met my cousin in midstream, and I daresay you introduced yourselves. But now we are on dry land, let’s try for a little formality. Mr. Townsend, allow me to present Miss Caroline Brotherton.” Five years ago, he’d been charmed by her quips. Time had not changed that at all.
The girl, a pretty creature with a mop of damp red hair, shivering in an indecently clinging gown, curtsied without taking her eyes off Robert. Max coughed.
Eleanor’s voice turned from amused raillery back to frost. “Caro. This is Mr. Quinton. I believe he is Mr. Townsend’s guardian.”
“Only for three more weeks! How do you and Max know each other, Miss Hardwick?”
Max waited with interest to hear her answer.
“We met in Sussex several years ago. Our acquaintance was of the slightest.”
That was one way of putting it. Measured in time their acquaintance had, indeed, been slight.