Macklin’s company was soothing, Roger thought as they returned from a morning ride the following day. He seemed to sense when one wished to talk and when not. And his conversation was always sensible. Should he ever need advice, Macklin was the man, Roger concluded. Not that he did. He had no pressing problems.
“Isn’t that Miss Fairclough?” his guest said, almost as if disputing Roger’s thought.
Roger looked. Fenella rode ahead of them toward the castle gate, alone, as was her habit. He was surprised. She hadn’t visited Chatton since their falling-out. His fault, he acknowledged for the first time.
Her skirts billowed in the wind off the sea, and her horse took offense, sidling and dancing. Roger worried momentarily, but she controlled her mount with casual ease, caught the cloth, and held it down.
“She’s the careless young lady you spoke of at the London dinner?” Macklin asked.
“Careless?”
“The one who urged your wife to venture out in bad weather.”
“Ah.” He’d spoken with extra rancor that night, Roger thought. His feelings had been rubbed raw by his encounter with his in-laws, and he’d been itching for a target. “I don’t think she did, really.”
“Indeed?” Macklin looked interested.
“Arabella had…strong opinions. I expect she did insist on going, as Fen—Miss Fairclough says.”
“I suppose Miss Fairclough might have refused to accompany her, to discourage her from going.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good,” said Roger. Opposing Arabella’s wishes was tantamount to a declaration of war, in her mind, and she fought the ensuing campaign without mercy. He’d learned that the day after his wedding.
“You think not?”
Roger pulled his thoughts back to the present. It didn’t do to remember those battles. If he thought of them, he might feel that brush of gratitude, that absolutely unacceptable tinge of relief at the fact of Arabella’s death. Suppressing all such inclinations, he spurred his horse to catch up with Fenella.
But she’d already gone in when they reached the castle. Her horse was being tended in the stables. Roger found himself hurrying. He discovered Fenella sitting with his mother in her parlor, laughing with her over some shared jest. The sight of them, leaning together in a shaft of sunlight, stopped him on the threshold.
They didn’t look alike. His mother’s willowy frame contrasted with Fenella’s compact curves. Her hair was silvered gold to the younger woman’s reddish tones. Their faces had different lines. And yet they exuded a kinship. The word delightful floated through Roger’s consciousness. Arabella had never sat with his mother, he remembered. She’d made certain that the dowager marchioness moved to the dower house, and their visits had been limited to formal occasions. An unpalatable mixture of emotion washed over him, along with a stab of pain in his midsection.
Macklin came in behind him, and Roger moved forward.
“There you are,” said his mother, rising. “How lovely. Come and sit.”
She proceeded to execute a maneuver rather like a dance, and before Roger finished wondering why she’d stood up at all, he found himself seated next to Fenella, while the two older members of the party were settled a little distance away. Perhaps his mother was taking advantage of the opportunity to flirt with Macklin, he thought. He was still a bit worried about her views on the earl’s visit. But when he looked, he found both of them gazing in his direction in an oddly unsettling way. Come to think of it, they didn’t flirt. They talked like old friends, and they were watching him now like kennel masters evaluating a promising puppy. Roger blinked. Where had that ridiculous idea come from?
Fenella held out a small packet wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “I brought you this,” she said.
Roger stared at the gift. He had a sudden sense of the world gone topsy-turvy.
“It’s a tonic for dyspepsia,” she continued. “You put a few drops in a glass of water and drink it if you’re feeling ill.”
Under her clear blue gaze, he felt uncomfortably exposed. “Why would you give it to me?”
“You kept clutching your midsection at the rehearsal. And looking pained.”
“It could have been distaste for the antics they were putting us through.”
She smiled a little. “You’ve done it at church as well.”
Roger was embarrassed. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know of his weakness. It was then that he noticed she was holding the packet so that it was shielded from the others. “Where did you get this?”
“My grandmother is renowned for her skill in the stillroom. People come from all around for her remedies.”
“You sent to Scotland?”
“No, I made it.”
“Yourself?”
“Grandmother taught me.”
That and so much else, Roger thought.
“I was with her for years,” Fenella added. “I needed something to do.”
“Besides changing out of all recognition.”
Her smile deepened. There were the dimples he hadn’t seen in a while, Roger noted. They added an impish quality to her beauty. “Besides that,” she said.
Once again, Roger was ambushed by a memory. They’d gathered the leading families of the neighborhood at Chatton Castle to introduce Arabella to local society. His wife had reveled in the occasion, holding court like the queen. Her enjoyment had been a relief. Roger had hoped the admiration she was receiving might ease her growing dislike of her new home. More vocally expressed with each passing day.
Moving through the crowd, greeting friends and acquaintances, he’d come face-to-face with a lovely young lady, dressed in sea-green muslin, sporting those very dimples. Before they spoke, he’d felt a pulse run through him, like a thread drawing him closer, rousing more than interest. And then he’d realized that this was Fenella Fairclough, the girl he’d refused to marry. He’d turned away, rudely. And from that moment he’d set Fenella at a distance. He was newly married. Such attractions had no place in his life. Not for anyone, and certainly not for this woman, with their history. After a while, he’d managed to convince himself that the moment hadn’t happened. But he didn’t talk with her or dance with her or hang about any room she inhabited.
He’d tried to discourage Arabella from making friends with Fenella. Which had caused his discontented wife to do just the opposite, of course. Somehow, amazingly, no one had told Arabella their story. Probably because most everyone hereabouts liked Fenella, and hadn’t much cared for his late wife. He’d been foul to Fenella these past months, Roger thought. Yet she’d taken the trouble to prepare this medicine. “Thank you,” he said, taking the packet.
“You’re welcome. It’s no great thing.”
“It’s an unlooked-for kindness. When I’ve been unkind, at times.”
“You’ve had difficulties.”
Was that sympathy in her gaze? After all his rudeness? He could almost imagine that she understood the mixture of emotions plaguing him. The attraction that Roger had suppressed for so long came leaping out of its cage. Ever since he’d held her over his shoulder, he’d longed to touch her again, he realized. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For?”
“The things I said to you, about you, after…Arabella’s death.” They’d never spoken of her.
“And about others,” she answered evenly. “The doctor, Arabella’s maid. You were rather free with your accusations.”
Roger leaned back. Had he expected immediate forgiveness? Apparently he had. Was he so complacent? His stomach gave a sharp twinge.
“They were quite affected by it, you know. The doctor felt like a failure. And Grace, the maid, was already overcome by grief for her mistress.”
Roger searched for words. Frustratingly, none came.
Fenella stood. “I must go. My father will be wondering where I am.”
Roger rose. He had to say something, but his mind was a jumble. She’d be shocked if she knew of his attraction, particularly after the way he’d treated her. This woman had run away to Scotland rather than marry him, he reminded himself. His urges were his problem. He turned away to ring for a footman.
Fenella said her goodbyes, fending off an escort to the front door, conscious of Lady Chatton’s interested gaze. Roger’s attempt at an apology had shaken her, she acknowledged as she strode through the hall, the long skirts of her riding habit looped over her arm. As had the way he’d looked at her. He’d been forbidden fruit since she returned home. Fenella stopped abruptly. “What?” she said aloud. Forbidden fruit? What sort of nonsense was that?
She walked on. The trouble was, since the pageant rehearsal, it was as if she could still feel Roger’s hands on her from time to time. His forearm around her knees, his palm against her back. The strength of his shoulder under her. That had been bad enough when he was carping at her. She could scorn his ridiculous attitude. If he meant to be pleasant now, she didn’t know what she would do. But this was no more than politeness, Fenella told herself. She wouldn’t refine too much on the change. She would remember that the present Marquess of Chatton had been revolted at the thought of marrying her. The word was not too strong. His expression on that long-ago day! Such disgust. She pushed the image out of her mind.
Outside, as she waited for her horse to be brought around, Fenella was surprised to see her nephew John appear from the direction of the stables, mounted on a horse from her father’s stables. Automatically, she noted it was a gentle one. She could trust their head groom to match guests and horses. And to send along the stable boy who trailed behind. “Hello, John,” she said as he approached. “Have you been visiting here?”
“I came to see Tom.”
Her sister’s son looked sulky, as usual. He really was a difficult boy. “The young man employed by Lord Macklin?”
“He isn’t employed. He’s his friend.” John’s expression dared her to argue with this assertion.
“Is he?” The connection seemed unusual. But it was none of her affair. “Are you headed home? We can ride together if you wait a moment.” A groom brought her horse and held it while she used the mounting block. Fenella arranged her skirts and took the reins.
“You don’t care about Tom?” said her nephew as they rode out the gates side by side. His tone was a little less gruff.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t mind that I’ve been spending time with him?”
“Why should I?”
“He’s not gentry.”
John said this as if it was a phrase he’d often heard. Thinking of his father, a stiff, prickly man, Fenella understood. Fleetingly, she wondered if she had an obligation to consider Mr. Symmes’s prejudices. But Greta had sent her son north. She’d have to accept Fenella’s choices. “If Lord Macklin has befriended him, he must have a good character. And I’m sure you enjoy some company younger than me and your grandfather.” John had not taken to her father so far. The boy seemed afraid of him.
John looked surprised, but he said nothing. They rode on. Fenella’s thoughts drifted back to her conversation with Roger. He’d looked sincere when he said he was sorry. She’d felt some honest contrition. It was the first real connection she’d had with him in…well, years. She tried to recall another such moment.
“You’ve been kind to me,” blurted out her nephew.
She hadn’t meant to ignore the boy. “As I should be. I am your aunt.” He looked as if he might cry, which would be humiliating at his age. “Is something wrong, John?”
“You don’t know why I’m here.” He bit his lower lip to stop its trembling. “I thought Mama would have told you what I’ve done.”
What in the world? Fenella remembered how childish transgressions could be magnified in one’s mind. Or, in her case, blown all out of proportion by her father’s attitude. He’d spent so much time shouting at her. She would never behave like that!
“If you did know, you wouldn’t want to be kind,” John added.
“I will always want to be kind,” Fenella declared. “And you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” It came out rather forcefully.
John blinked, a bit startled, but then he shook his head. “If you found out why I was sent…”
“For a visit with your family. That’s all I need to know.”
This assurance seemed to make him more unhappy rather than less so. “So it’s all fake,” he added as if to himself. He swallowed.
She knew that expression, Fenella thought. Here was a child bracing for a thundering scold. How to assure him that she would not deliver such a thing?
“I bought a boa constrictor,” John blurted out. “That’s a kind of large snake. And it ate Sally’s kitten.”
Fenella took a moment to absorb this startling information. Sally was her youngest niece, just three years old. Unbidden, a scene rose in her mind—scales, fangs, baby cat. She hid a shudder, partly at the fate of the kitten and partly at the shrieking chaos that must have ensued. Justified, really, she thought.
“It was an accident,” John continued, his face a picture of anguish. “The boa was meant to stay in its cage. I brought it mice. It shouldn’t have been at all hungry. I don’t know how it got out.”
Would she, and John’s mother, have been more sympathetic if they’d had brothers? Fenella wondered. She remembered the mud-slathered boys of her childhood. Roger and his friends had seemed to delight in noise and dirt. Not snakes, though, as far as she knew. “You didn’t mean it,” she managed.
“Of course not. I like kittens!”
He spoke as if he’d been accused of the opposite. Fenella recalled her father’s many unfair indictments. “Well, it sounds like an unfortunate accident. I can tell you’re sorry it happened.”
John nodded. Tears had run down his cheeks. He sniffed.
“So let us say no more about it.”
“Really?” The boy blinked rapidly. He sniffed again. “You aren’t revolted?”
Again, it sounded as if he’d heard that word before. Repeatedly. “Not at all,” Fenella lied. Then, worried she’d been too cavalier, she added, “Although I would rather you didn’t bring snakes into the house.”
“I wouldn’t! Never again!” John gazed at the ground, shrugged, and sighed. “There’s no good ones up here anyway,” he said, somewhat diluting his fervent promise.
“Ah.” Fenella grappled with the idea of a good snake. What exactly constituted its goodness? She suspected this lay in qualities other than beneficence. And then she was struck by an idea. “There’s a place you could use, if you’d like to, ah, collect specimens.”
John raised his head to stare at her.
“Your mother and your Aunt Nora had a playhouse in our apple orchard.” Her two sisters, years older than Fenella, hadn’t allowed her inside their sanctum. In fact, they’d made a great point of excluding her from their games. Their father’s disappointment in his third child had spilled over onto his other offspring. Fleetingly, Fenella remembered the day she’d read a story about fairy changelings. She’d decided at once that she must be such a magical substitution, so alien did she feel within her family. Now, she rather enjoyed the idea of Greta’s son filling her old playhouse with snakes. “I’ll show you when we get back.”
“You will?”
“Yes.”
“You’re an absolute trump, Aunt Fenella!”
And just like that, one could bask in a male’s unalloyed admiration, she thought. Simply offer a boy a place to keep his snakes.
But matters were not so simple. When they reached Clough House, they found Wrayle lurking in the front hall. John’s dour attendant, pinched and disapproving, looked like a scarecrow dressed as a valet. He surged forward when they came in. “Master Sherrington went out without permission,” he said to Fenella.
“I was visiting at Chatton Castle,” said her nephew.
Though she could see that this address impressed Wrayle, it didn’t change his position. “He did not inform me,” the man said to Fenella. “I am to accompany him on any outings.” His expression was smug, even a bit contemptuous. Clearly, he expected Fenella to take his side.
Wrayle had not made himself popular with the household. More than just his air of aggrieved superiority, he took liberties. Fenella had had complaints. She’d been planning to deal with him, though not looking forward to it. “A stable boy accompanied John,” she said, slightly emphasizing her nephew’s preferred form of address. “He was perfectly safe.”
“That is not the point,” replied Wrayle. “He requires my supervision.”
Fenella was not accustomed to such an insolent tone, not from anyone. “I don’t think he does, really,” she replied. “In fact, I think you’d best return to my sister’s home.” That would solve several problems at once. At her side, John started as if he’d been poked with a pin.
“I was engaged to attend Master Sherrington.”
“We’ll take good care of him,” Fenella said. It wasn’t as if a ten-year-old boy required a valet.
“I’m to watch him and return him to school at the end of the summer holidays,” said Wrayle. He spoke as if John was an annoying package that must be hauled around the country.
“We’ll make sure he gets there.”
“He cannot go alone.”
“Naturally not,” said Fenella. “Perhaps I’ll take him myself. John could show me his school.” She glanced at her nephew. His eyes and mouth were wide. His hands were clasped so tightly, they trembled. She turned back to Wrayle. “But I’m afraid we can’t accommodate you here any longer.”
The gaunt man bridled. “You have no choice.”
Fenella’s temper was not easily roused, but this man managed it, and not for the first time. “I think you’ll find that I do,” she said.
“I’m not employed by you. You cannot dismiss me!”
“I’m not dismissing you, Wrayle. I am simply sending you back to my sister.”
Wrayle bared his teeth in a sort of snarling smile. “We’ll see about that.” He turned and charged up the stairs.
“He’ll go to my grandfather,” John said. “Wrayle always toadeats the person highest in rank.”
“Of course he does.” Fenella picked up the skirts of her riding habit. “Go and ask William to come to your grandfather’s chamber,” she told John as she started up the steps.
Simpson the valet hovered in the doorway of her father’s room, a thin, aging figure. “That fellow Wrayle pushed his way in, miss. He shoved me!”
“I’ll speak to him.”
“I am not accustomed to such treatment.”
“Of course not. It won’t happen again. I’ll see to it.”
Fenella entered her father’s room, and found Wrayle leaning over the bed. He looked like a great crow poised to peck out an eye. She started to take a position opposite him, and then realized that she didn’t wish to argue with Wrayle across her father’s prostrate form. She stopped beside the door. Wrayle shot her a triumphant glance, as if he imagined he would have vengeance for her treatment of him.
“Mr. Symmes sent me,” the man said to her father. “I answer to him, and no one else.”
Her father looked peevish. Fenella knew he didn’t like dealing with domestic difficulties. He thought such things beneath him. “You can’t dismiss Sherrington’s valet, Fenella,” he said.
“Of course not, Papa.” Before Wrayle’s obvious glee could be expressed, she added, “I’m merely sending him back to Greta’s.”
“You have no right—” the valet began.
“I’m sorry you were bothered, Papa,” she cut in. “But there have been complaints from the housemaids.” This was perfectly true. The younger maids, and particularly the youngest, who was just fourteen, had told the housekeeper that Wrayle looked for opportunities to catch them alone and make lewd remarks. The housekeeper, unsuccessful in her attempts to curb him, had told Fenella just this morning. “You know the sort of thing,” she added.
Her father looked pained.
“You won’t take the word of silly girls,” said Wrayle. He sounded utterly certain.
Fenella decided she would get a letter to her sister before the man arrived back at her home. Whatever Wrayle might think, Greta wouldn’t tolerate such creeping behavior.
“Have them up here,” Wrayle said grandly. “I’ll soon put their stories to the lie.” He looked as if he enjoyed a good wrangle.
Her father frowned. Wrayle’s attitude was annoying him. As how could it not? Surely it wasn’t so difficult for him to choose between daughter and servant? He waved a pale hand. “Do as you think best, Fenella.”
“Sir!” said Wrayle.
“Go away. All of you.”
“Of course, Papa. You must rest.” Fenella indicated the door with a gesture. Wrayle looked rebellious, but William appeared in the opening just then. The burly footman, who helped lift her father when such services were needed, looked daunting, as Fenella had known he would. She gestured again. Wrayle ground his teeth, but he went.
Fenella followed. When she’d shut the bedchamber door behind her, she summoned all the hauteur and steely resolve she’d learned from her Scottish grandmother. Or rather had uncovered from deep inside herself, if Grandmamma was to be believed.
“You have half an hour to pack your things, Wrayle. William will help you, and then he will take you over to the tollgate where you can get the mail coach south.” A glance at William showed Fenella that he relished his assignment. She wasn’t surprised. He had friends among the housemaids.
“I refuse!”
William took a step toward him. Fenella held up a hand. “You really can’t stay if we don’t want you here, you know.”
The man sputtered and fumed. Finally he turned away. William followed. “I shall tell Mr. Symmes how I have been treated here!” was Wrayle’s parting shot.
Fenella supposed he might cause problems between the two households. She definitely needed to tell Greta about his poor behavior before he had a chance to complain. Let Greta explain that to her husband.
“You got rid of Wrayle,” said a small, awed voice.
She looked down to find her nephew gazing at her as if she had performed a miracle. “He’ll be there when you go home,” she pointed out.
“That’s not until after next term. Mama won’t be thinking so much about my snake by then. She’ll have a new baby. And Sally already has a new kitten.” He seemed to equate the two additions. “I’ll send Sally some ribbons. She likes to tie ribbons around their necks.” He pondered the plan. “Do you have any ribbons? Ones you don’t need, I mean.”
“I might.”
“Thank you!” John beamed at her, and Fenella understood that his gratitude extended to much more than ribbons. “Is there anything I can help you with?” he added. “I’d be glad to. Anything at all!”
“Perhaps. We’ll see.”
“Yes, Aunt Fenella.”
He practically bowed, and Fenella realized that she’d assumed mythic proportions in his mind. Inadvertently, she’d become the Aunt, the imposing relative so many families seemed to possess. She remembered her own aunt Moira, her mother’s oldest sister. Wife of a Scottish laird, she’d been up to anything. Fenella had wistfully admired her forthright manner and fiery spirit. A smile escaped her. Aunt Moira wasn’t a bad source of inspiration. “Shall I show you the playhouse now?” she asked John.
He looked ready to jump for joy. “Yes, Aunt Fenella!”